Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
by Darkgirl5
Summary: Snow has something he needs to say.  Lightning cannot hear it.  Post game angst-fest.  Snow/Lightning, Snow/Serah.  Ensemble cast.  Set in a newly forming Pulse. Will have adventure as it goes. Slow building. Spoilers.
1. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

Disclaimer: These characters are the property of Square Enix, et al. I make no claims to anything but the unabashed angst herein.  
This story started life as a one shot over on LJ and is growing. And growing. So, yes, I did just post my third In Progress FFXIII story. And for some reason, it really wanted to be a...Romance?  
Warning: Here there be pairings, romance and angst galore. Love unfulfilled, etc, etc. Spoilers for the entire game, including the ending. I'm gearing up for another long one here, so don't expect a quick and easy resolution. Slow buildup is how I roll.  
Pairing: Snow/Lightning, Snow/Serah.

This story is not part of my story Evolution, though I'd say the relationship between these two characters in Evolution sparked this story. Confused? Me too!

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"The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you."  
-Anonymous

Chapter 1  
Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

She snaps awake with panic bubbling up inside her. She blinks to clear her mind. Lightning feels the goose flesh all over her body, feels the tiny hairs standing up on the back of her neck. She stays on her back in her bed, keeps her breathing even and scans her bedroom for whatever it is that roused her. She listens for other breathing, hears nothing and rolls in one smooth move from beneath her warm blankets to her knees beside the bed. She slides her hand under the bed, feels the grip of her Gunblade and pulls it, holds it at the ready beside her. She rises with every ounce of predatory grace she possesses and moves into the corner, waiting for whomever or whatever woke her to make a move. She's ready.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Someone pounds on her door from the outside. She jumps, feels her heart pound wildly in her chest and throat. Then she feels her face heat with embarrassment over being so jumpy.

She heaves a sigh, glances at the clock and frowns at it. It's way too late to even be considered the middle of the night anymore, and far too early to be morning yet. This is an ungodly hour, and there's no excuse for visitors. Who the hell is knocking at the door at...3:18 am?

Lightning relaxes as she heads to the door, but she keeps her Edged Carbine in her hand. The house is cold and drafty and makes the bare skin of her legs and arms prickle. The concrete floor is frigid beneath her bare feet, reminding her once again that she needs to get some rugs in this house. She glances at the ratty couch and collapsing coffee table. And some decent furnishings. She's been living here for months and the place still looks like a temporary dwelling. It's absurd.

She's absurd.

More pounding on the door and Lightning pauses mid-stride. Whatever this is cannot be good. Maybe she should ignore it. She debates a moment before deciding that she can handle whomever or whatever it is that stands on the other side of her door. She's an ex-Guardian Corps and ex-l'Cie. She's defeated monsters that would destroy humanity. There's very little she can't handle anymore. She reaches for the knob and hauls the door open as the next round of banging starts. Her heart stutters and wrenches.

She was wrong.

"Snow?" He stands with his head down and his fist raised in the interrupted act of banging on her door. He glances up at her once then looks back at his boots. She looks back at the clock then looks at him again. She half expects him to evaporate because there is no reason on **any** world that would make him standing at her doorway at **any **time acceptable, let alone at 3:21 am. "What the hell?" she snaps and then feels a sickening realization dawn. Her irritation disappears as she thinks of the only reason he might come to her door in the middle of the night. Her stomach flips. "Is it Serah? Has something happened?"

"I love Serah!" Snow declares.

Lightning stares at him in an attempt to divine the truth. His eyes are glassy, refusing to meet hers, but there's no sign that he's been crying. His cheeks and nose are red from the cold, not from fighting; his fists and jaw are clenched. There's no sign of battle on him anywhere. No blood. No bruising. Nothing to indicate why he might have come to her door in the middle of the night. Nothing in his look or his demeanor that tells her why he's standing here or what he's thinking. Before tonight, Lightning would have been positive that she could read Snow. He's a fairly simple guy, all in all. Not to mention that she spent months travelling around with him in fairly close quarters, fighting back to back and side by side. Reading his body language is second nature to her. But as she stares at him now, she's clueless.

"I love Serah!" Snow repeats. Lightning feels her eyes bug, confusion filling every molecule of her exhausted mind.

"I...know?" It comes out as a question not because she questions the veracity of the statement, but the point of it. "Did you come to my house at 3:30 in the morning to tell me that you love Serah? Because I gotta tell you Snow, I'm starting to think you've taken one too many hits to the head."

"No," he shakes his head. Then he nods, "Yes." Now she's concerned. Confusion and disorientation are signs of concussion. But he doesn't seem injured in any way. If he were drunk, she'd be able to smell it on him. Not to mention that being drunk might provide a reason for this odd and disconcerting behavior. Not an excuse, mind; but a reason. Alcohol has a tendency to make bad ideas seem fantastic, especially in the middle of the night. She knows this from unfortunate experience.

But he's stone sober and nonsensical at her doorstep in the middle of the night for no discernible reason. "Can I come in? It's cold out here."

Now that he mentions it, she realizes that she's freezing. It's the middle of winter after all and she's in her pajamas and bare feet standing with the frigid air pouring into her house. Her feet are numb from the blasting cold air. Her legs and arms burn with the cold. She shivers and bounces from foot to foot as she steps aside and motions him in with the hand holding her Edged Carbine. He steps through the door and she locks it behind him.

"Gonna shoot me?" Snow jokes as he shrugs out of his coat and hangs it on the coat rack. She blinks a few times, stumped until she follows his gaze to the weapon in her hand. _Oh._

"I haven't decided." He laughs at that. The familiar sound warms her for a moment before she remembers that she's confused, tired and aggravated. "What the hell are you doing here Snow? It's the middle of the damn night!"

"Can I sit down?" He stands there looking at his feet in her hallway, looking for all the world like someone just kicked his damn puppy. She barks out an incredulous laugh, wonders how deep down the rabbit hole they are going to travel before she can go back to bed and crawl under her covers and go back to sleep.

"Yeah sure, why not? Have a seat." She doesn't bother to hide the sarcasm. Screw him if he can't deal with it. She gestures to the couch and watches as he slinks down onto it. She clicks the safety back on her Edged Carbine, looks around for a moment for a place to put it, realizes that there is no place to put it and just holds it. She turns her attention back to her uninvited guest.

He looks around the room, eyes roving over the ratty furniture, the crappy lamps, the concrete floors that still have no rugs. She feels her face flush with embarrassment at her shoddy living conditions before she gets angry all over again. What right did he have to come to her house and make her feel ashamed of her shitty house-keeping skills, or her miserable furniture? She'd been happily sleeping in her goddamn bed! "What the hell are you doing here, Snow?"

He looks at her and then glances away. She's starting to get really worried now. Even for him, this is screwed up behavior. "Would you sit down?" he asks and gestures to the couch next to him. "You're making me nervous." Her jaw drops.

"I'm making you nervous? Are you insane?" She starts pacing now to burn off the nervous energy. "Would you tell me what's going on before I change my mind and shoot you after all?"

He sits on the couch and picks at a small hole in the knee of his pants. His leg bounces up and down. He drums his fingers on his kneecaps. He grinds his teeth. He won't look at her. He opens his mouth once or twice in an aborted effort to speak before snapping it shut again. She feels her anxiety grow with each second of tense silence. Whatever is going on here can't be good.

Nothing good happens in the middle of the night. Not to her. Ever. It's, like, a rule she lives by.

She decides to try a different tactic. She pads over to him on numb, bare feet, places her Edged Carbine on the crappy table beside the crappy couch, kneels before him so she can meet his eyes and says, "Did something happen to Serah? Snow?"

Snow shakes his head, remains silent and her patience disappears. She stands up and stamps her foot, "If something has happened to my sister and you're dicking around instead of telling me, I WILL shoot you! Do you understand me?"

"Serah is fine," Snow says and Lightning feels the knot inside her untwist. "Serah is wonderful." Are they back to this again? He really did come at oh three thirty to wax poetical about her sister.

"I know. You love Serah." She is frustrated, not bitter. She hopes that it sounds that way. "So what the hell are you doing here?"

"Aren't you listening?" She stares at him wide-eyed and then she rushes forward and grabs his head, yanks off his bandana and runs her fingers over his skull looking for injuries. On Snow's most irritating day, he's never made this little sense before. There must be something wrong with him.

"What happened Snow?" she asks. She waits. There's a new knot of worry forming in her gut. How did he manage to get himself injured? "Where are you hurt?" He grabs her wrists and pulls them away from his head and down to his chest. He looks up at her to meet her eyes and she sees something there that makes her whole body heat and cool, flush and pale at once.

_Oh God!_

"Don't you get it Light?" He threads his fingers through hers and she pulls her hands to extricate them from his grip. He holds firm. "Serah is wonderful, and I love her, but..."

"Shut up!" She says and yanks her hands away from him, feels his blunt nails cut a groove into her flesh from the force of their separation. She needs to get as far away from him as possible. Obviously he's lost his mind somehow. Something has possessed him, or hijacked his brain. "Don't you dare say anything right now!"

"I have to." She shakes her head at him.

"No. You don't. You can't. You shut up and get the hell out of my house right now!" She stands on the far side of the room and points at her door. "You go home to your fiancée. My sister! And you keep your promise to make her happy."

"I can't," he says, sounding bereft. Like he's been trying all along to do just that and it isn't working.

"Oh yes you can. Whatever this is Snow, it doesn't mean anything! NOTHING!" She feels like she's going to throw up all over the floor. She wonders for a moment if maybe not putting down rugs was just an act of really excellent foresight. Because puke stinks and it's a pain in the ass to clean out of rugs. She's learned that one the hard way raising a teenage sister.

"Lightning..."

"You shut up," she points at him. She runs fingers through her hair. (Her tangled, un-brushed hair.) "I mean it." She chokes on the last word, feels hysteria frothing up inside her. She can't do this! She storms into her kitchen without giving him a second glance. She needs a drink! She feels hot tears burning in her eyes and she sniffles and snorts once as she pulls out a glass and pours out a tall glass of...something foul that Fang gave her on their journey. She swallows, gags, and swallows another mouthful. She's trembling all over, only not from the cold anymore. She feels his hand on her shoulder and she shrugs him off, slams her glass down hard enough to slosh the drink over the top and spill it all over her hand, turns around and shoves him as hard as she can. He stumbles back two steps.

"What the hell are you thinking?" She yells. "How can you do this to m...my sister?" _How can you do this to me? How dare you ever mention this to me? How dare you come to my house and tear all the scabs off all my wounds? _She steps forward and pokes a finger in his chest. "Serah deserves better than this Snow!" That she means. "You promised..."

The words break like glass on concrete. She inhales a breath that becomes a sob. She buries her face in her hands. She needs to pull herself together. This won't do. What the hell is happening here? There is no world where this is fair or acceptable. She hasn't done anything to deserve this sort of treatment.

"Lightning," Snow whispers and steps toward her. Her heartbreak disappears into the inferno of her infinite rage. Anger settles her, gives her a focus. She clenches a fist and lets it fly, delivers a right hook that sends Snow flailing into the cobbled together pile of wood that serves as her kitchen table. He lands on his back on the table and it collapses into toothpicks and kindling beneath him. The clatter and bang of furniture breaking makes her feel great. She refuses to wince as he rolls his head from side to side, sits up and shakes it off like a wet dog. She stares at him for a moment as he groans, sits up and rubs his jaw. He hauls himself back to his feet, plucks a few splinters from his pants, turns and gives her his best smirk. "Nice table."

She fights the smile that tugs at her mouth, presses instead on her right pinky with her left hand. She gasps at the unexpected fiery pain and Snow steps forward again. She steps back, refusing to allow him to get near her, and he holds his hands up in a surrendering gesture before saying, "Can I see your hand? Please?"

"It's fine." She replies, turns around and grabs her glass and downs the foul liquor inside it. The awful crap burns its way down her throat to land like a hot mess in her empty stomach.

He stands beside her and looks at her rapidly swelling and bruising finger. "It's broken." He slips the fingers of his left hand beneath her palm and lifts the hand, manipulates the pinky and ring finger until she winces. "It's a boxer's fracture. You need ice. And to learn how to punch."

"I know how to punch." She yanks her hand from his grasp and jerks open the freezer door to grab the ice bucket.

"I beg to differ. People who know how to punch, know how to injure their opponents and not themselves. People who don't know how to punch, break their own fingers."

"Get the hell out of my house Snow!" She grabs the dirty dishtowel and fills it with a half dozen ice cubes before balling it up and putting it on hand. The cold makes the pain flare up and she groans at the contact. God, she hates him right now! She really wishes she could go back to hating him all the time.

"Where's your first aid kit?" Snow asks, ignoring her outrage.

"Just GET OUT!" She hollers. She can't do this with him in her house. He's managed to upend her life in under twenty minutes. He ignores her shouting.

"Look Light, you need to stabilize those fingers or you'll make the injury worse. So stop being a stubborn bitch and tell me where your first aid kit is! You know what? Never mind!" He throws his hands up and storms out of the kitchen; she hears the telltale slam of the door.

She stands agog for a moment before snapping her jaw shut. Snow hasn't called her names since...the Purge. Since before their journey together. Before they got to know one another at all. He may not even have called her names then. (At least, not to her face.) She heaves a shaky sigh, chews on her bottom lip for a moment, dumps the ice out of her towel into her sink and feels all her barriers start collapsing. Her insides are wobbling like jello. She turns the water on, grabs her dirty glass from the counter and the sponge and scrubs the foul liquor from the inside and outside of the glass.

Her whole body is shaking and her eyes are burning. She wipes at them with the back of her left hand, feels the sob that's been building inside her tear her apart on its way out. She holds her breath to stop this madness but the next gut-wrenching moan breaks through the dam she's erected and is all the more painful for it. It's like an explosion in her chest that sucks her breath and will from her.

She slides to her knees on the miserable, stained linoleum, presses her forehead to the pressboard of the cabinet and weeps. Large, mournful, painful cries that make her feel like she's turning inside out. She thumps her head against the cabinet, feels the small pain blossom on her forehead and decides that she likes the distraction. Finds that the physical pain distracts her from the internal ones and quells the sadness. She lifts her head and thumps it again, this time harder.

Each thump gives her back some control, lets her forget her sorrow in favor of the pain. She's breathing hard now, but she's got some control back. The tears have stopped overflowing, but they still blur her vision as they pool in her eyes. She needs more pain. More control. She looks at her broken hand, now swelling and turning red and blue with bruising. She clenches the fist, feels the pain all the way up to her shoulder and raises it to thump against the cabinet.

A hand grabs hers before it makes contact and she startles, yelps and kicks out, catching her assailant the knee and forcing him to join her on her linoleum floor.

"What the hell are you doing?" Snow yells at her.

"What the hell are you doing HERE?" She'd heard him leave. She knows she did. She should have locked the goddamn door. What was she thinking? "You left! Why are you back?"

Snow looks confused, then his face softens in that frustrating and endearing way . "I was looking for your first aid kit!" She can't look at him anymore. He's shredded all her defenses and he'll see right through her. She looks away from him stares at her toenails. The polish looks a bit dull, and there's a chip in the paint on her big toenail. She needs to fix her feet. She looks like a mess. "Did you really think I'd just leave you here when you hurt yourself?" His voice is so soft. He may as well grab a knife and gut her now. It would be kinder.

Snow doesn't wait for an answer. Or wait for her to look at him for that matter. He stands up, moves around behind her and says, "Come on. Up you come." He lifts her to her feet and steps away knowing that touching her is a bad idea. She stands like a moron in the middle of her kitchen while Snow picks up the first aid kit from where it fell on the floor during his 'tumble' and looks around her ruined kitchen. The table is a pile of debris. The single chair doesn't look like it would hold his weight. "Alright. Living Room it is then." He looks at her and says, "After you."

She stares at him for a moment like he's some alien from another planet rather than a man she's known for the better part of a year. She cannot understand why he has chosen to upset their universe in this manner. She also can't think very clearly with the pain emanating from her right hand. She precedes him into the living room, flicks on the overhead light and plops down on the couch. The piece of crap creaks and groans under her weight and she's pretty sure a spring just broke and stuck her in her ass. Snow strolls in after her, gives the 'coffee table' the stink eye before shoving it aside with one foot and sitting on the floor. He holds out his hand palm up and looks at her expectantly. "May I?"

She snarls at him and he abandons his attempts at civility and grabs her by the wrist to examine her fingers. "Nice job you did here." He manipulates her pinky finger and pain flares through her hand up to her forearm. She stiffens but doesn't give him the satisfaction of wincing. He still glances up at her and whispers, "Sorry." He repeats the action with her ring finger. The movement hurts but nowhere near as much. "Looks like you got lucky and only broke the little one."

"Real lucky," she mumbles. He smirks at her, lifts those too blue eyes to her and she looks away. She's too angry at him to let him smooth things over right now.

"Well, yeah actually. You're really lucky you only broke the one. I know how fix that metacarpal. If you'd broken the first or second metacarpals, we'd be looking for a surgeon at 4 o'clock in the morning."

"You know what would have been really lucky?" He looks at her, curious. "If my asshole brother-in-law to be hadn't decided to wake me up at 3:15 in the frigging morning just to see if he could get me to punch him in the face and break my hand." He narrows his eyes at her before letting the whole scowl melt away into his most dazzling smile. The smile that kills her every time.

"Yep. That's it. You found me out, Light. I just really wanted to break your hand today." He rifles through the first aid kit until he comes up with a painkiller. "Take this. You're going to need it." She plucks the pill from his fingers and dry swallows it. The pill leaves a bitter taste in her mouth and she scowls. Snow laughs at her and she scowls more. He gets very serious.

"This is going to hurt." He presses on the bone a bit and she feels like she might throw up. Stars explode in front of her eyes and she thinks she might have shouted. When it's over she's panting and clammy. Snow looks worse than she feels but remains professional. He turns back to the first aid kit and pulls out tape.

"I'm going to tape your pinky to your ring finger. But you're probably going to want to go to a doctor tomorrow to make sure you don't need surgical repair. Or a better splint."

"Hmmm," she grunts. She can't speak right now anyway. Snow layers padding between her fingers and slowly wraps the tape around the two, careful not to constrict circulation. She watches him as he works, blue eyes fixated on her fingers. She feels his fingers slipping over hers, smoothing tape on each pass. He rips the tape off with his teeth and secures it, fingers twisting around hers in soft twirling caresses.

Silence hangs like an axe.

"Lightning..." _No!_ She stands up and bumps into him in her struggle to get away. "Lightning," he repeats to her retreating back.

"Don't!" She stops at the far side of the room . "Just...just go home Snow." He stands and takes a step towards her. "Why would you do this?" She asks. "What's the point?"

"How can I not do this?"

"What did you think would happen here?" She asks and starts pacing. "Really. What?" She holds her arms out. "Did you think that..." She can't even finish the sentence. It's too hard to think about, let alone to speak about. "Why did you have to do this?"

"I love you."

"Oh god." She might throw up. She puts her good hand over her mouth. She feels the liquor and painkiller swirl together in her gut and thinks that she might just puke everything up onto the concrete in her living room. "No you don't!"

"Don't tell me what I feel!" He steps towards her and she takes another retreating step. "I lo..."

"DON'T!" she yells. "Don't say it again. Not ever!" Her stomach cramps and she presses her broken hand into the knotted pain in her gut. "You don't love me. You love Serah."

"I do love Serah." And god does that have to hurt too? What the hell is wrong with her?

"That's right. So what the hell are you doing here?"

"I love Serah. But I'm In love with you."

She holds her hands over her ears too late to block out the sound of it. "Don't say that! It's not true." She looks up at him and he looks broken. "Whatever it is you think you feel is not real!"

"What?"

"Whatever you saw in me is only a shadow of what you see in Serah. Don't you get it? She's the best part of me!" She feels like she's going to fall apart. "Go home to Serah."

"Tell me you don't love me and I'll leave." Her whole body is going to split in half. She's shaking so hard that she feels like she might fly apart at any moment. Moreover, she hopes that she flies apart. She wants to melt into the floor, or run screaming into the night. She can't take this.

"You bastard!" She whispers. Then louder she says, "You have no right!"

"I have no right to find out if you love me?"

"No!" She wants to punch him again. If he gets any closer, she's going to hit him again, broken hand or no. "You don't. Because you belong to someone else. And not just anyone else. You belong to MY SISTER! Get out of my house!"

"I can't..."

"Go home," she says. She steps closer to him, pouring every ounce of hope she has into her request. He looks away from her, face creased and crumpled. "Go home and just l**ook **at Serah again. You love HER. She's the one you want to marry and you'll see that and remember that as soon as you look at her. Whatever craziness you think you feel right now is just that. It's crazy. You'll go home, and we'll forget this ever happened. And you'll marry my sister and you'll be both be happy."

Snow sniffs once and pins her with his knowing gaze. "What about you Lightning?" She turns away from him. She wants to grab her weapon and kill him for doing this to her. For waking her from her rest and mounting this assault upon her in the middle of the night. She goes to walk out on him but he grabs her by the arm and spins her around to look at him. "What about how you feel, huh? You going to tell me you don't love me?" He looks at where his fingers press bruises into her arm and loosens his grip, smoothes his fingers over the reddening skin. "Tell me that, and I'll do what you want."

She shrugs out of his grip and steps away from him. "Get out of my house."

"That's not the right answer," he whispers.

"You bastard!" she hisses and throws another punch with her broken hand. He catches her wrist before the hit connects. They stare at each other for an infinite moment before he closes his eyes, pulls her fingers to his mouth and lays a kiss on the spot where tape meets skin. She gasps once, closes her eyes at the feel of his lips on her skin before remembering that he's insane and determined to pollute her with his lunacy. She struggles out of his grip until he releases her and they stand toe to toe.

"You want me to tell you?" She asks. She steels herself. She can do this. Lying prettily has always been easy for her.

"No," he shakes his head and sounds so broken. "No. I **need** you to tell me, Lightning." His eyes beg her. She takes a deep breath and decides to give him what he wants.

"Alright. The only thing that we'll ever give one another Snow, is that bruise on your face, and this broken hand. The only thing between us, is Serah."

"What if I don't want to be with Serah anymore?" He asks and she feels like he's just gut punched her. All her air explodes out of her. She takes a moment, stands straight and looks him dead in his eyes.

"Then that's your choice. But if you think that I would take something from my sister, you're out of your mind. You leaving her won't change anything. You were never mine. And you never will be." She slides her broken hand over the bruise on his face from where her fist connected earlier. "I won't tell you anything because it will never matter. This," she presses on the bruise with her broken hand until they both cringe, "is all we'll ever have."

He covers her hand with his own and turns his face into her palm to lay a kiss there. She watches, feels her heart drop into her stomach so she can throw it up later with the liquor and painkillers. "You don't want me," she whispers. "I'm broken. Serah is so much...more than I'll ever be. And she loves you."

"I love Serah," he whispers into her palm.

"I know you do." She says, feels the first ray of hope since this nightmare started.

"I love you." How is it possible that the three most sought after words in the universe can destroy her?

"It doesn't matter." And it doesn't. "You'll get over it." He will. She knows that he will go home, kiss Serah. Maybe make love to her. Serah will sigh at him and cuddle with him and he'll remember that Lightning is just the prototype model. The broken, buggy piece of crap. He'll have some moments of 'what if' but he'll marry Serah and never have a moment's regret. And Serah will be happy. And that is all that matters to her.

"What about you Light?" He whispers to her. His right hand snakes its way around her hip, his left hand holds her right hand to his face and somehow she is in Snow's arms. She feels like she's suffocating. She feels like she's flying.

"I'll be fine," she gasps as he pulls her to him. "I'm always fine."

"Is that why you're living in this dump? Because you're always fine?" When did he learn to see right through her? How the hell is it possible that this...do-nothing asshole has managed to know her better than anyone else? "Is that why you have broken furniture? Is that why I never see you anymore? Why you won't see Serah? Is that why you've stopped returning Hope's messages? Because you're always fine?"

She can feel his breath on her face. How the hell did he get this close?

She snakes her left hand between them and puts it on his chest. Presses to keep him away from her. She needs distance. "You need to go home. This can't happen. This will never happen, Snow. Please go home."

"Lightning," he murmurs, presses his forehead against hers, exhales a breath in a hot gush of air over her face. She closes her eyes, twists her head away.

"If you really love me, you won't do this to me," it's a cheap shot. She doesn't care. She can't stand his hands on her. She can't live without his hands on her. "I've never asked you for anything Snow. I'm asking you to leave my house and not to ever bring this up again." Snow's grip on her hip lessens. The fingers covering hers disappear. "Go home to Serah. Don't hurt her." He exhales and her hair moves. She can feel him tilting his head, his nose sliding against hers. She whispers into his mouth before his lips brush hers: "Please don't do this to me."

He releases her and steps away. She keeps her eyes closed, her face turned away from him. She wants to weep. She wants to scream. She wants to collapse on the floor. She hears him walk over to the coat rack. She hears him slide into his overcoat and walk to the front door. She glances at him, sees his slumped shoulders, his dejected demeanor. She exhales and turns her back to the door, unable to watch him leave, unable to look at him again.

She hears the lock on the front door click in release. She closes her eyes and holds her breath.

Three large steps, a hand on her arm whipping her around, fingers in her hair and he says, "just once," before he swoops down and scalds her with his mouth. She's so surprised that she can't even protest as his tongue traces her lips, her teeth, her tongue. One long perfect moment and she's so stunned that she doesn't have time to protest before he pants into her mouth. "I'm sorry. Sorry." He kisses her once more because he's always been a bit of a liar and then he's gone and she's hot and cold and standing barefoot on the concrete floor of her miserable living room floor.

She touches her swollen mouth with her broken hand, looks around her miserable house, looks at the clock on the wall to find that it's 4:17 am. Her entire life has been destroyed in less than one hour. That might be a record, but she's not certain. She walks to the door and locks it and listens to the silence of his absence. She clicks off the living room light and walks back into her bedroom. She slips between blankets long since gone cold in her absence and decides that she needs a change. She licks her still swollen mouth and finds that she can still taste him. She feels a tear burn from the corner of her eye, to slide down and disappear into the pillow of her hair. She wipes at her eyes with her broken hand. Tomorrow morning she'll move closer to Fang and Vanille (oh how she misses them) and Cocoon. There are still people who might need her help. There's got to be someplace where she can be useful. She needs a change of scenery. Snow and Serah will get married and maybe one day, they can all be a family again.

Maybe one day, that won't kill her inside.

She closes her eyes and sighs, and longs for the thrum of battle.

* * *

TBC...

This started out as a one shot and it was meant as such. However...the story continued on and Lightning really wanted to keep it moving and what Lightning says, goes!

I have held this story off this site because so MANY PEOPLE keep thinking I'm going to pair these two up in Evolution. I'm not.


	2. I Have Measured Out My Life

I don't own Snow or Lightning. They own me!  
Warnings: angst. That's pretty much a standard for this ditty.  
Thanks to my reviewers. I got some great feedback on the first chapter and I appreciate the constructive criticism. It gave me food for thought. I'm not sure how much I'll change now (please don't think I disregarded your opinions), but I tend to do revisions after completion of a story in order to continue to improve it.

* * *

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."  
-Henry David Thoreau

-I Have Measured out my Life with Coffee Spoons-

Sleep eludes Lightning in the aftermath of Snow's visit.

Oh she tries to sleep. She does the best damn imitation of sleep any human has ever done! Still, she cannot shake the feelings churning inside her long enough for sleep to seep into her exhausted body or quell her spinning mind. Her stomach roils around, combining anger, hurt, liquor and painkillers together like some sort of sick witch's brew.

She might throw up. An acidic grumble of her stomach makes her wonder if that wouldn't be the best thing. She contemplates forcing the issue before deciding that it would just take too much effort. Not to mention the act would force her from beneath her warm covers and out of her imitation sleep. She settles, counts out heartbeats in her head.

Feels the warmth of his hand like a brand along her hipbone.

She rolls over onto her back and stares at the ceiling.

The room is dark, but it's not a perfect darkness. She can see the crack that runs across her ceiling like some sort of tectonic fault line. She focuses on it, hopes that concentrating on nothing will let her anxiety drain away like pus from a boil and allow her a measure of peace. She feels her heartbeat steady out, feels her eyelids get heavy and droop.

Sees blue eyes and white teeth surrounded by smiling, chapped lips. Feels the moisture of his breath slide over her jaw and earlobe as he whispers unspeakable things to her. Feels the shiver that started at the base of her spine rattle through her all over again.

She hurls herself back onto her side and punches her pillow once to try and get it right. She decides that** it **must be the problem, because she is never going to admit that SNOW of all people can steal sleep and solace from her. He doesn't have that kind of power. She won't let him have that kind of power over her. The decision makes her feel better. She closes her eyes, takes steadying breaths to calm herself; feels herself drift for a sweet moment, body sinking deeper into her warm, inviting bed.

_Just once._

She opens her eyes, kicks her legs once in frustration; settles again and closes her eyes. She swallows, moistens her lips and tastes him all over again.

"Damn it!" She wishes he were here right now. She'd break his goddamn neck!

She takes a steadying breath, closes her eyes and tries again to find slumber. She drifts, makes it to that wonderful in-between space where sleep is just an inch away...

_I'm in love with you. _

_Tell me you don't love me. _

_That's it!_ She opens her eyes and kicks her blankets off with more violence than necessary. Her legs tangle in them and she thrashes like an infant having a tantrum.

"Asshole!" She yells to her empty room. "Just...goddamn...stupid...jerk!" She blows out a hard breath.

_Very articulate. _

Not only did he steal her sleep, he stole her coherence as well! _This just keeps getting better and better. _She pulls the tangled blankets from around her legs and hurls them onto the floor. They whip through the air, lash her cheek, whisper against her eye and brush her lashes. She flinches, rage growing by leaps and bounds with every stupid second. Her eye waters and she dashes away the tears, scrapes her eyelid with the bandaging she'd forgotten about and lets out a frustrated shout. She clenches a fist in a rage, feels the pain from her fractured hand fire up her arm. She forces herself to unclench her muscles, to take a breath before she hurts herself in some stupid childish temper tantrum. The energy bubbling up inside her refuses to dissipate without an outlet. She gets out of bed and paces her room to blow off this inflated anger born of sleeplessness and fear.

_How could he do this? What could have been going through his tiny, pea brain to make him think that this was acceptable or appropriate?_

If she could go back in time, she'd have never opened the goddamn door! Hell, as long as she is dreaming up pointless what ifs, she'd have never moved into this house. She didn't want to! She wanted to stay near Sazh and Dajh from the start. They settled near Cocoon-near Fang and Vanille; near Hope and his father. She wanted to stay near her new friends to build a new life-for herself and for the survivors from Cocoon.

Sazh thought that the refugees would need help building a settlement: supplies, food, fresh water, agriculture, not to mention protection from the dangers of Gran Pulse. He managed to somehow get hold of an aircraft before everything went to hell, said it would be great for shuttling heavy loads as well as passengers. So, he stayed where he could do some good. Bartholomew Estheim made a similar choice, most likely at the behest of his son. Hope didn't want their group to separate; he thought that perhaps their being together might rouse Fang and Vanille from their stasis.

She doubted that was possible, but leaving Fang and Vanille behind felt wrong enough that she entertained Hope's idea.

But Snow and Serah wanted a seaside town. They wanted something that resembled the home they'd lost in Bodhum back on Cocoon. Serah grew up by the sea, had her happiest moments and fondest memories under the sun, soft sand squishing between her toes. Snow wanted only Serah's happiness; so Snow and his band of merry idiots, aka N.O.R.A., decided to start building on and near the ruins of Oerba, clear across the Archylte Steppe from their friends. And Serah begged Lightning to stay with them.

Lightning hesitated in agreeing to the request. It was a first in both their lives. Part of her knew even then that living here would be difficult. The seaside settlement didn't suit her. Oerba carried memories she would just as soon forget: memories of Cieth, of Fang's devastation at finding her home destroyed, of Vanille's squeals of delight when they reassembled her pet...whatever the hell it was; memories of Barthandelus taunting and mocking them in Serah's form.

She shivers.

She would have been happier never seeing Oerba again, truth be told.

Bodhum was her home by circumstance, not choice. She had no real attachment to the beach or ocean. Her only attachments to Bodhum were in the memories it carried, and the family that remained.

But she soon found her apathy to beachfront property in general, and her aversion to Oerba specifically were was just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. A few weeks after settling, Lightning realized that Snow made her uncomfortable. It wasn't the intense dislike that she felt when she first met him. That would have been easy to quash or deal with. She could have pointed to it and said, 'there's the problem, now get the hell over it.'

No, it was nothing that obvious. The discomfort was amorphous and undefined. Everything would be okay one moment. Then the next thing she knew, Snow would wink at her and she'd feel a heated flush creep up over her face, or he'd tease her and something in her gut would twist and clench. It wasn't anger or embarrassment. She couldn't figure out what the hell it was, so she did her best to avoid it and him altogether. She felt like she was always running away, and Lightning never ran from anything in her life. Hell, she ran head first towards death and destruction for weeks and weeks and never flinched.

The whole experience made her skin crawl. It made her jumpy and irritable. She hated this uncertainty blossoming within her. She no longer understood her reactions; she no longer knew herself. She didn't want to be around Snow at all because of this indefinable thing twisting inside her.

She never suspected the real problem, and that's the real kicker here.

She never put her finger on the problem; never probed or dissected her discomfort to ascertain its cause. She never would have believed that he noticed her discomfort. And she never would have thought he'd be astute enough to figure out the reason for said discomfort when **she** hadn't. The very idea that he might have any sort of feelings for her beyond exasperation and possible familial affection was preposterous. Snow radiated lovesick joy, spent his days and nights making googly eyes at Serah. Serah shined brighter than any gemstone Lightning ever saw when she was with Snow and she swore up and down that 'Her Hero' hung the stars in the heavens just for her. They were happy, and Lightning was happy for them both. There was no hint of bitterness or jealousy inside her.

She still doesn't feel jealous or covetous. She doesn't feel anything but treacherous.

Despite her happiness for her sister, there was a thread of ickiness inside her too; something that remained unsettled despite all her best efforts. She figured she was uncomfortable being third wheel in their little group; she didn't like feeling like she was intruding on what should be private moments between lovers. It was, and still is, a reasonable explanation for her discomfiture.

Other times she blamed it on sitting idle while so many people were struggling. Lightning was born for activity. She never sat idle a day in her life. In school she worked hard and played harder. When her parents died, she worked to prove to the authorities that she was a capable caregiver for her sister despite her youth, and never faltered in that endeavor. After graduation, she enlisted in the military, determined to become a member of the Guardian Corps and protect the citizens of Cocoon. She achieved that goal and became one of the most respected member of the GC in her regiment.

She needed work but instead of helping people she was just sitting on her ass for months, collecting dust and getting stale.

Also a viable explanation.

Apparently, that was the explanation Snow came up with for her withdrawal as well. About four months after they settled, Snow (and his merry band of idiots) showed up at her door and asked her if she would help out with keeping the settlement perimeter clear to prevent local wildlife wandering into the developing community. Snow's exact words were "It'll be good for you." The comment rankled and Lightning balked; found the idea irritating-mostly because it was his idea and she really didn't accept direction well. The idea of working for Snow in any capacity pissed her off. He was an undisciplined ass and she was a sergeant in the Guardian Corps. But once her kneejerk denial passed, she realized that she liked the idea of having a purpose again. Real work of a type at which she was exceptional would go a long way towards making her feel like she belonged here.

And of course, the rush and thrill of fighting was a great bonus.

Snow winked at her, clapped her on the back in one of his painful and playful signs of encouragement, and yelled "Atta girl!" She almost socked him in the mouth. The look he gave her told her he expected the hit, so she surprised him (and herself) by not doing it. Instead she surprised them both by placing a hand on his chest over his heart, giving him her best warm smile and saying with all sincerity, "Thank you, Snow."

The stammering and blushing that followed was worth the effort it took to rein in her baser instincts.

Of course, she can now see that Snow was paying far too close attention to her. It's a benefit of hindsight she could do without to be honest.

So for a while she was able to burn off her excess energy protecting people again; she could push away uncomfortable thoughts and just be herself and do her thing. Her weapon, herself and the great outdoors! She was invigorated and felt more alive than she'd felt...in years, if she were being truthful. There was no more chain of command, no more shaky, unsettling orders. She could put all her training to good use doing good works. It was excellent! She was exorcising her demons and having a great time in the process.

Life was good, right up until she got injured on a patrol. She misstepped, zigged when she should have zagged and caught a nasty rake from some filthy claws. She slew the bastard creature and kept going, ignoring the blood leaking through her shirt, too high on the adrenaline to notice or care.

It was nothing. A scratch!

* * *

_"Scratch, Lightning?" Snow yells as he wipes antiseptic over the claw marks on her back. She flinches away, more from the anger vibrating through him than from any actual pain from the injury._

_"I'm fine." She is. The pain is negligible, and they both know that she's had far worse. Hell, he saw her get far worse than this glancing hit during their travels together. There's minor bleeding and marginal pain._

_"This one is almost to the bone. It needs stitches!" He traces his finger none-too-gently along the undamaged skin next to the wound. It's a long gash, and now that he disturbed it, it burns like he poured salt into it. She grits her teeth and exhales. Bastard made it hurt to make a point. _

_Screw him! It's still nothing._

_"So? It's not my first rodeo Snow." She pulls her hair over her shoulder to give him access to the shoulder blade. "And it's not the first time you've seen me hurt. Just stitch it up already."_

_He slams things as he pulls suture materials from the kit. "You're unbelievable!" He drops everything with a loud crash, nearly bowls her over as he stands up and storms out of the room. She stares after him in shock._

_"What the hell just happened?" She asks the empty room._

* * *

Serah stitched it up, lecturing the entire time about being careful and taking care of herself. "We love you Claire." Lightning bristled at the use of her given name, tensed under sweeping allegations of love, but kept her temper in check. Pain tended to make her cranky and ornery. She knew this particular truth about herself, recognized it as one of her worst qualities. She held her tongue, offered thanks for the help and empty promises to be more careful. She went home, took a painkiller and forgot all about the incident as she fell into a dreamless sleep. She didn't think about it again at all until the next day when Snow showed up to accompany her on her next patrol.

* * *

_She opens the door and finds Snow loitering on her front porch. She stares at him, speechless. Trying to determine what the hell he is doing on her doorstep. He stormed out on her last night and left her to bleed and hurt until Serah got home. _

_When Serah asked him what he was thinking, Lightning heard him yell from a far room, "Serves her right!"_

_Now he stands here at her doorstep like nothing happened, and she wonders if she hallucinated the entire event. He gives her his megawatt smile and she feels dread creeping in. "Hey. Ready to go?" _

Ready to go?_ Has she stepped into an alternate universe?_

_"What are you doing here?" She's cautious, hurtling towards pissed._

_He winks at her. "I'm here to keep you out of trouble."_

_A strange feeling lights up her insides, makes her queasy and angry all at once. She grits her teeth. "I don't need a babysitter, Snow." She leaves out the implied: _Especially not you_._

_"Well, Serah asked me to look after you. And that's what I'm going to do from now on. So get used to it."_

* * *

And that was that.

He stole her solace then and blamed the mess on Serah. The one place where she was free, where she found a measure of happiness and he infiltrated it like some sort of disease. She retreated from everything after he'd taken her last shred of freedom from her, clipped her wings and shackled her good and proper. He couldn't have made her more a prisoner if he'd tried.

She started retreating from everything then. She pulled further and further away. Patrols no longer gave her happiness so she'd begged off them claiming pains and other obligations. Hope would call her on the two way radios and could always hear her distress. Her unwillingness to tell him her troubles hurt him, so she stopped talking to him altogether.

She began to resent her sister for putting her on a choke chain and handing her very short leash to Snow.

She had no escape but within the walls of her very shabby home, so she shut herself away in it and wallowed as she'd never done before. She hadn't felt that sorry for herself after her parents died! She pissed herself off no end and she spent most days either sulking or raging aloud about her childish, churlish behavior.

Then he had the audacity to violate her last retreat as well. He showed up in the middle of the night and took a wrecking ball to her entire life. Then he poured gasoline on it and lit it on fire for good measure.

The whispered confessions will haunt her until she dies.

Don't misunderstand now-she's not some romantic asshole who believes she'll never get over him. She's still pissed off that she fell for him in the first place. So pissed off that she spent months and months denying that there were any feelings at all. She knows damn well that she'll get over him. In fact, she can't frigging wait to get over him! It'll be a long, slow, and unbelievably irritating process, but one day she'll wake up and it will be gone.

Kind of like a virus. A sickening, insanity inducing virus.

She'll be able to look at him and remember without dredging up the gut-wrenching feelings and crushing guilt. There'll be memories of feelings, which is not even close to the same thing. They'll just be...memories. Vague. Like faded, yellowed photographs. She knows that she won't even be able to recall what it felt like, or why she'd felt it at all. She may have one or two regrets. She may even indulge them once in a while in the middle of the night, or when the healed fracture line in her hand aches from the cold or the damp; she'll dream that she hadn't turned him away, or that his 'just once' meant more than one kiss.

She shivers at the idea.

Then she'll remember that he was never hers to take, and that doing so would have been the worst sort of betrayal of the only family she has left. She'll remember that she may be many things, but she is no base thief, and sure as hell is no traitor. She'll remember that any other decision would trash the lives of the two people she loves most in the world, and destroy any semblance of self worth she might have left. She'll realize that she has done the best she possibly can in a miserable situation. She has honored her sister as far as she could with a traitorous, idiotic heart that simply would not listen to reason. At all.

She stops pacing, runs her fingers through her hair and exhales. She feels better, like her idle thoughts and random musings have actually resolved the matter when in actuality, she's accomplished nothing at all. She walks out of her room and heads to the shower. She is cold now. And tired. A hot shower will help both problems, and she's almost salivating at the idea of it.

The pipes groan and shake when she twists the faucet but she decides to be patient and waits for the water to run hot. She looks at the makeshift splint that Snow constructed for her last night, knows that she cannot get it wet. She considers tearing off the tape and rebinding the injury after her shower before dismissing the idea. The task might prove too difficult considering her right hand is dominant.

She is definitely not refusing to change the bandaging because Snow constructed the splint; not because his fingers smoothed the tape with care and his teeth tore the ragged end. That would be stupid sentimental nonsense and unworthy of a soldier: a sergeantin the Guardian Corp (though that rank means less than nothing in the wake of Cocoon's destruction.) She growls at herself and hunts down a plastic bag to cover the bandaging.

She is absurd. Absurd, and more than a bit pathetic. When the hell did that happen?

Locating and positioning the bag takes enough time that the bathroom is steamy and warm when she gets back . She's practically drooling as she strips off her pajamas and climbs into the dingy porcelain tub. She stands beneath the near scalding spray and lets out a moan that would be more appropriate in a pornographic film than in a disgusting bathtub. Although, now that she thinks of it, many porno movies have scenes in disgusting bathtubs.

She needs to switch her brain's track now.

The hot water is heaven, and Lightning stands under the spray far longer than it takes to clean herself. She lets the water cascade over her, beat down on her muscles and pour over her head, washing every mental and physical ache away. It is a purification and it is heaven. She stands there until the water temperature starts dropping by degrees per second.

"Damn it!" She scowls as she twists off the faucet, wraps a towel around herself and climbs out of the tub. She pulls off the bag over her hand with her teeth, sees that the hot water has called up bruises in every shade of blue and purple across her right hand. The skin feels tight now, swelled up over the injury from the damage. She tries to move her hand, feels the pain shoot right to her elbow and grunts. Her best bet is not moving it.

_Damn it!_

Brushing her teeth is an awkward and annoying thing to do with her left hand. It seems strange how backwards it feels to her, and it takes at least twice as long as usual to brush. Her feet have gone numb from the cold tile floor and she has a strange déjà vu for a few hours ago.

/Cold feet. Prickling skin. _Can I come in?/_

She shakes her head to dispel the memory before she gets lost in it. She has no desire to relive events that she wishes she hadn't experienced in the first place. She slams the cabinet over the sink hard enough to crack the mirror. The crack splits right through her face, giving the illusion that the two halves of her don't match up. That she's as broken outside as she is inside.

Her empty expression twists into a disgusted sneer.

She needs to get the hell out of here. She's seeing metaphors in cracked mirrors now! Soon she'll start seeing images of the Maker in her burnt toast, and the future in wet tea leaves! She'll lose what little grip she has left. She's losing her goddamn mind sitting around here day in and day out, doing nothing but counting out her days in snowfall accumulations and dodged calls. She's withering into a dried out husk, a mere shadow of herself, and somewhere along the way she stopped caring.

She's no good to anyone here. Her presence only threatens to ruin the lives of two people she loves. Sazh has extended multiple invitations to her, then multiple requests for aid. She has resisted going only to keep her sister happy.

_Is that really the only reason, Lightning?_

No! She's so not going there and screw him for making her doubt her own motivations.

Well, whatever. Considering last night's events, her sister will be much happier if Lightning is on the other side of this forsaken planet.

Lucky for her, that's just where she's going. Sazh lives on the far side of the Archylte Steppe.

She lets her years of training take over. Soldiers have to be able to break down camp, pack up and move out within minutes of receiving the order. It's a comfortable and familiar thing to boil her life down to essentials that can be carried in a pack. She sorts through her belongings in no time, packs a bag for her gear, cleans and prepares her weapon, and dresses herself in the most sensible clothing she can find for the journey she is about to take. She glances around the house for anything that she might want to take. She has no intentions of ever returning to this hovel. She realizes now that this was never her home. It was a mere way-station; a place for her to marinate in her own juices until inactivity drove her back to her first, best destiny. She is a warrior, a soldier without an army.

She is an army of one. She always has been.

She's not a home-maker, and she won't stick around to be Crazy Aunt Claire, or 'that lady with thirty cats.' She is not meant for staying home and keeping house. She only ever did that to take care of Serah.

Serah can care for herself now, and Snow can keep her safe. Lightning trusts the moron not screw that up, at least. He may be mixed up and confused, but Lightning is positive that he loves Serah and would die to keep her safe. That is all she will ever ask of him. Ever. Again.

Lightning longs for the open road. She longs for freedom and fighting. She's very skilled and highly trained, and she's rotting here in her own self indulgent depression.

She is a wasting damned shame. But no more.

She packs her things with speed and efficiency. She's a whirlwind tearing through her house, plucking essentials from their places amongst the useless crap that she's scattered about in vain effort to create the illusion of domesticity in this prison. She packs her clothing, her med-kit and her items; she grabs her ammo, gun oil, sharpening stone and polishing cloth. She grabs rope and climbing gear-just in case. She considers leaving behind the communicator Sazh built for all of them out of two way radios and cannibalized cell phone parts. It was an act of inspired brilliance on his part, and shortened the distance between the members of their makeshift family dramatically.

She stares at it where it lays on the table and realizes that leaving it would be a hurtful act, not to mention a stupid one. She knows this is a dangerous undertaking; she knows she might die. Leaving behind her only means to reach her loved ones would be petty and cruel, and while she doesn't deny her own capacity for cruelty, she isn't proud of it. Nor does she indulge it willingly. Leaving this here will hurt Serah. She's done more than her share of hurting Serah in her lifetime. She stops considering, shoves the communicator into a waterproof bag in her pack and forgets it.

Lightning turns her attention to her weapon. She lifts it in her injured hand, feels the pain, but knows it won't interfere in the usage. She flips the switch watches the blade extend with a smooth snap, then retract clean and easy. Her weapon is beautiful and unfailing-her most treasured possession. She smiles, strokes the long line of her Edged Carbine, and holsters it. She slips her birthday dagger into a case and straps it to her thigh. She debates taking the sphere from its pedestal on her dresser. It is her Odin Stone and it earned a place of honor in her life and bedroom. She hasn't touched it since placing it; she always figured the best course was to leave the past in the past and not look back. She turns away from it now and takes two steps toward the door. She pauses and glances back over her shoulder, catches a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye.

_Ah, what the hell? _

She spins, stretches and swipes the stone from the pedestal, pets it once before secreting it away into her pouch. She doubts it works, but it is hers and she wants it. Odin became a part of her during that nightmare journey, and she is not ready to part company just yet.

Is she demented for missing her Eidolon?

She shakes her head, decides that the answer to that question doesn't matter anyway, and gives the empty rooms a cursory glance. She spots the two pictures that sit in her bedroom: one of Hope, Sazh, Dajh, Snow and her in front of the crystal of their lost friends and home, and a childhood picture of her and Serah with their parents. She swipes them both, places her childhood family picture in her bag and lets her fingers linger over the image of their little motley crew. She feels her eyes burn as she stares at Fang and Vanille, lost to them now forever in a final act of sacrifice and friendship, and feels a gaping hole open so wide inside her that she's afraid her whole house might just fall into it.

She misses them so much sometimes. She doesn't really understand how it's possible for two people she'd only known briefly to create such an absence in her now. Through their time and trials together, they became a family.

She pulls out the picture with her parents, stares at her mother's kind eyes-so much like Serah's-and her father's wide smile. Her heart hurts at the idea of losing her last connection to them.

She's tired of losing her family.

She sniffs and packs the pictures away. She'll see some of her lost family again soon. She'll go and pay her respects to Fang and Vanille at their 'resting place.' She turns away, deciding that she is packed and ready, before remembering that she's forgotten the only other thing she has left of Fang-that bottle of poisonous liquor from five hundred years ago stuffed away in her kitchen-and goes to retrieve it. It is frivolous and unnecessary.

Like the Odin stone, it is hers and she wants it.

She slips the liquor into her pouch, hears the clinking and gurgling indicative of a bottle of liquid. She can almost hear Fang's voice saying "Cheers!" in those innocuous sounds. She smiles at the memory of her friend, feels the pang of loneliness hit her hard.

She grabs her boots, sits onto her couch and feels the broken spring stick her in her ass again. She slides over, scowls down at the couch and sees something black pressed between the cushions. She pulls the crumpled cloth from its hiding place already knowing what she's going to find.

Snow's bandana. She pulled it off him last night when she checked him for head injuries, before she realized that he wasn't injured-just insane. She sees a few blond hairs tied into the knot at the back, drops the thing onto the couch as if it were on fire. She ignores it, turns back toward the task at hand.

She tucks her winter white wool leggings into her fur lined boots, laces them as tightly as possible to keep heat in and moisture out. Walking in these sorts of conditions risks frostbite, gangrene and possible amputation. She looks back over at the bandana where it lays abandoned on the cushions, feels her face heat. She stands up and moves away. She pulls a heavy white wool sweater over her knit shirts for extra layers and warmth. She's already sweating. She pulls on her heavy animal skin poncho, her hat, scarf and mittens. Her right hand throbs and she scowls at it while coveting the pain.

_/This is the only thing we'll ever give one another./_

The stupid sentiment makes her want to punch herself in the face and break her hand all over again. It also calls her attention to the discarded bandana. She looks away again. She needs to get the hell out of here. Now that she's packed away her few important possessions, this house contains nothing for her but bad memories. Memories of her drinking too much to avoid thinking too much. Inactivity doesn't agree with her. Her mother used to say that idle hands are the devil's workshop. She's met the devil-good old Barthandelus-so she's pretty sure that's not true. Everything was that bastard's workshop.

Totally besides the point.

She needs to be doing something useful, something worthwhile. There's too much to do in this world for her to sit in a house and feel sorry for herself. She's positive that doing things will help purge this insanity from her. It was too much time spent in too close proximity under dire circumstances that birthed this abomination in her heart. Distance and time will restore sanity to her life, and hopefully do the same for Snow. She straps on her weapon, positions it for easy access, slings her pack onto her back, pulls open the door and gets smacked with the icy breeze. She pauses...

Inhales. Exhales.

...Storms over to the couch and swipes the bandana with a curse, turns her back on the crappy room, heads out into the frigid winter morning and never looks back.

* * *

TBC...  
This one may be a bit slow, but I'm working up to something here. And besides-I wanted to give some insight into Lighting's state of mind and answer questions raised by chapter 1. Not necessarily everyone's bag, I understand, but I consider it relevant all the same.

A/N # 875-I'd assumed that everyone was familiar with T.S. Eliot and 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' If you are not, I suggest you read it. It is one of my favorite poems and there will be MANY chapter titles that are direct quotes or paraphrases from that poem. T.S. Eliot is one of the great poets, and his work should be read over and over again. If you don't like it the first time, keep trying it. His poems get better and better, are full of wonderful imagery.

Feedback is love.


	3. How Should I Begin?

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy XIII. If I did, the story would have been much darker than it was. (For anyone reading Evolution-you already know that.)  
Thanks to those who've reviewed so far. I appreciate all the feedback (constructive criticism, support, etc.) I hope you enjoy this chapter. Things pick up a bit here. But again-Slow building.  
Warnings: Mentions of sexual content (nothing graphic-I'm pretty sure your average prime time TV show gets a lot heavier than this chapter. If you think the rating needs to go up, let me know. I'm thinking T is still appropriate for now.)  
More Angst. No violence. Yet. (If you read my stories at all, then you know violence will be here at some point.)

* * *

"Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea, And the East and West the wander-thirst that will not let me be."  
-Gerald Gould

How Should I Begin...?

"Brilliant, Lightning. Just brilliant." The trip to Taejin's Tower is easy going despite the raging blizzard. Lightning moves with efficiency through the fine, powdery snow. She reaches the small port they built to house the gondola lifts they fashioned from the old elevator system to ascend the steep cliff faces.

And to reach the top of Taejin's tower.

She enters and closes the doors, takes a moment to breathe warmer air. The gondola lifts are in good shape. She checks the ropes and cabling at the bullwheel in the station; checks the gears. She knows all the ins and outs of this machine since she, Sazh and Bartholomew Estheim designed it together. Their main goal was to design a transport system using pulleys, levers and physics to substitute electric power. The rationale behind designing such a system was to conserve the precious resources and fuel they still had in order to use it to construct a means to generate power.

The result of this idea is a hand cranked gondola system that uses counter weights, pulleys, levers and good old fashioned 'elbow grease' to ascend the mountain and reach the top of the tower. Lightning thought the design of the system both elegant and ingenious in its simplicity and was proud to be part of both the design and construction.

The majority of Cocoon citizens, however, were not used to doing much of anything for themselves. Too long had they lived as kept pets in a fal'Cie zoo to embrace any sort of manual labor. Many found the idea of hunting and gathering for food barbaric and beneath them. Agriculture was a foreign concept and garnered looks of incredulity and distaste. And the idea of hand pumps and pulley systems instead of electric pumps and elevators frustrated most of them. The hard work and rough lifestyle turned most of them off to moving away from the center of the growing civilization, which was the reason for the very small population of people in their oceanfront community.

Lightning, on the other hand, embraces hard work. She lives for it! She enters the gondola lift and closes the door, thrilled for the both the reprieve from the weather and a dry place to rest. She sits for a moment, takes the opportunity to catch her breath and nibble some dried meat. The small bite of food hits her stomach like a bomb and makes her queasy. She scowls at the remnants of her meal before rewrapping it and replacing it in her pack. She withdraws a canteen and takes a few small sips of water. The water is frigid and Lightning puts it away before her thirst is quenched to avoid lowering her core body temperature too much. She takes a deep breath...

She's ready now.

She pulls the lever to open the terminal door, packs everything away and grabs onto the handle on the wheel with both hands. She pushes and pulls on the handle, feels muscles in her body pull and flex. Her hand aches more with each motion. The gears are frozen, the cable icy and the work is hard and tedious. The high winds rock the car back and forth on the line and make moving the car upwards and forward even more difficult. Lightning feels sweat on her brow pour into her eyes; more drips from her face into her collar. She knows that her many layers of clothing will be wet from the inside out by the time she reaches the apex of the tower. She continues working, feels the burn in her thighs, in her abdominal muscles. Feels the ache in her bad shoulder that will turn to cramps and spasms by later tonight.

She stops the car once on the way up, hits the brake and takes a moment to catch her breath. The wind rocks the car in near one hundred fifty degree arcs on the line and Lightning slams into the walls like a pinball in a machine for a moment before getting her balance again and continuing the ascent.

It takes her better than a half hour to make it to the top and by the time she summits and coasts into the terminal, she's aching, panting, and swooning with exhaustion. Straightening up makes every muscle in her back spasm and lock and the cold only exacerbates the problem. Her injured hand is swollen and throbbing and spectacularly purple. She presses at the fractured bone, feels the sharp edge where it's moved again and she curses.

She presses against it until she screeches, until the bone feels straight. She chews her chapped lower lip bloody as she tapes up her injured hand again over the original dressing. She dry swallows a painkiller, feels a wave of nausea so strong it knocks her on her ass. She sits, puts her head between her legs and waits for the pain and sickness and ringing to pass.

_Wait...Ringing?_

The sound draws her out of her misery. She looks at her pack and realizes that the ringing is coming from inside it.

From her communicator.

"Damn it." She roots around in her bag until she comes up with the communicator, looks at the display.

Snow.

"Damn it," she repeats. She considers answering the call for about two seconds, decides that her pain is making her weak. She puts the communicator away unanswered.

She feels better all around. She exits the terminal, at the top of Taejin's Tower. She's looking forward to using the Tower's strange elevator system after that workout. It'll be nice to take it easy for a bit before she has to start trudging again. She walks to the first elevator and hears an unholy racket from below. _What the...?_ She walks to the center of the tower and looks down, finds the reason for her easy, uninterrupted journey inside.

Every animal and monster for miles has sought shelter from the storm within the tower.

"You have got to be kidding me," she says to no one. Or maybe she's just talking to fate and that miserable bitch Etro. Damn Maker and her stupid fal'Cie. This is all her fault. Lightning's positive that it must be her fault. Everything else that sucks in Lightning's life is the Maker's fault, so why should this be different? She stares into the meat grinder below and considers her chances for survival.

"No way." She walks to the east side of the tower and looks down to see what awaits her at the front entrance. She's almost afraid to look. If there are too many creatures milling around at the entrance she's going to have to turn back. She stares into the whipping wind toward the base of the tower and is pleasantly surprised to see that there's a whole lot of nothing waiting for her down there.

"That's because the animals are smarter than you are Lightning," she grumbles to herself. She considers her options. Through the throng, or over the side. "Both options suck, as per usual."

Still, there's no animals down there.

She heaves an enormous sigh that is visible in the frigid air.

"Okay then." So much for the easy way. She digs out her climbing gear: her hooks and anchors, rappel device and ropes. She chooses the longest rope she has, hopes it's long enough. She's just not confident enough in her finger strength or dexterity to do this mess with two ropes. She steps into her harness, checks the clips. She gets out her climbing gloves, realizes that she's not going to be able to get them on with her makeshift splint. She looks at the gloves and makes a decision.

She pulls out her knife and slits the inner seams of the ring finger and pinky of the right glove; she'll stitch it up again later. She can't afford to screw up her hand anymore by climbing without support on the break. She pulls on the fingerless gloves, knows that the cold is going to be a problem. She's going to have to do this very fast if she doesn't want frostbite on her fingertips.

She anchors her rope, ties the ends together, throws the tied ends off the side of the tower and prays it will make it to the bottom. When she sees it pool below she exhales a relieved breath. She sets her pack on her back again, hears more ringing inside it and swears aloud. She listens to the communicator ring once...twice...

_Ah, what the hell?_

She knows she shouldn't answer it. No good will come of it. Still, she slips off the pack and withdraws the communicator, hits the button to connect already knowing who will be on the line.

"Yeah," she answers. She must be a masochist.

"You left." _Obviously._

"What do you want?" _Stay cold._ She shivers once in the biting wind. _It should be easy._

"You left," he repeats. "Why did you leave?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just ask me that question." _Dumbass!_

"Yeah, I know. It's just..." he pauses. "It's just...you left and you didn't say anything." He sounds angry, and she feels her temper flare to match it. It feels good! "How could you just…leave?" His voice breaks on the last word and the anger fades into something that sounds more like hurt. That's not something she can take. She doesn't want to hurt him. She shouldn't matter enough to hurt him. It's not her right.

"I need a change." Why is she explaining herself to him?

"Look, Lightning…" his voice is small and so un-Snow that she can't listen to it anymore.

"It's none of your business, what I do," she's being cruel and she hates it. She hates him for making her be mean to him. "What do you want? Why are you calling me?"

"I…I was concerned." And that just sucks; it hits her like a gut shot. "I...I came to your house this morning. To apologize and...and to check. To make sure you were... you know with your hand and everything. And ..you were gone." Like hell he came to apologize and if she had any doubts about her decision, they are gone now. She doubts she would have been able to withstand another relentless assault ala 3:30 am. Her defenses are shredded and she's too exhausted to hold the offensive. She decides to show mercy now.

"You don't have to apologize, okay?" It's not his fault. Not really. "We're good. What's done is done."

"But…"

"But nothing. Don't call me again." Pause. She can almost feel his pain. She closes her eyes and centers herself. She shouldn't have answered the call. If she weren't so terrified of plummeting to her death and no one knowing what happened to her, she never would have.

"Where are you?"

"None of your business." She cannot relent.

"I know." He surprises her with that one. She wasn't expecting agreement. "But can't you tell me anyway? Please? I want…" If he says it, I'm hanging up on him. "I want to know you're safe. That's not too much to ask, right? I mean…I thought we... I thought we were friends at least."

She closes her eyes and sits down on the floor. Her legs won't hold her up anymore right now. "We were," she tells him.

"Were?" His voice wobbles in a sickening way. _Crap._ She didn't mean it like that. "I destroyed everything? I'm sorry."

"Alright." She closes her eyes. Friends? It's ridiculous that he should be so upset over the idea of them not being friends. It's ridiculous that she should find it heartbreaking. "We are. Okay? We are friends."

"So won't you just tell me?"

"Snow..."

"Come on, Light. As your friend." She heaves a sigh. She shouldn't. She knows she shouldn't tell him. It isn't going to make him feel better. He's just going to worry. He may even tell her sister, which will worry her too.

"I'm…" she should not do this. "In Taejin's Tower." She's an idiot.

"What?" He bellows at her. "Are you nuts? You know how dangerous that is! What could you possibly be thinking about?"

"I can take care of myself," she says and feels her anger coming back. It's enough to get her back onto her feet again. "And anyway, it's none of your business. Not as my friend, or as my anything. Do you get it?" There's nothing but silence. "We already had this conversation." She waits for his counterargument.

"Just…be careful. Alright?" She's almost disappointed that he relented. Almost.

"Yeah, I will be," she promises. "And Snow?"

"Yeah Light?" Why does he have to sound hopeful?

"Don't call me again." She hates him for making her hurt him. Why can't he just leave her alone?

_Why did you answer the call?_

"I…I just…I need to know you're alright. Will you check in with me?"

"No."

"Lightning. Please?" She hates him for hurting her.

"I'll…check in with Serah." This is not conciliatory. She always planned to check in with her sister. "And I'm going to ask Sazh to meet me on the eastern border of the Archylte Steppe."

"The eastern border? You're going to travel across the Steppe by yourself? " Does he have to sound like that?

"I've been taking care of myself for a long time Snow. I'll be fine." She will be.

"I'm coming with you!" He declares. She knew he was thinking it, but she didn't think he would dare say it out loud.

"No you're not." He exhausts her "You're staying home with my sister where you belong."

"Lightning..."

"It's none of your business Snow. I am NONE of your business. Get that through your head. Don't call me again or I'll dump the communicator." She disconnects the call, presses the communicator against her forehead, closes her eyes and just breathes.

She should not have answered the call. It was foolish. It was self destructive. It was cruel. Once upon a time she didn't mind being cruel to him. Now it makes her sick.

She curses the part of her that wanted to speak to him. She loathes the piece of her that needed to hear his voice one more time.

In case she dies.

She's pathetic!

She shakes thoughts of Snow and her weakness out of her head and focuses on the task at hand. She checks her clips again, sets her rappel device, climbs onto the parapet of the tower, puts her back to the open air and sits in her harness.

The first drop is always terrifying. She can check her knots and ropes forty times; until she sits back into her harness, she has no idea whether she's done a good job. Lightning isn't used to such an archaic means of descending great heights. She always had her anti-gravity field generator to break her fall. She just leapt from wherever, snapped her fingers and she was safe. It was faster and far more efficient than ropes and hooks and clamps; and if by some off chance the device failed, there wouldn't even be enough time for her life to flash before her eyes before she impacted and died.

That was then. Now she has to rappel down the side of a two hundred plus foot tower.

She starts slowly, moving inch by painful inch. Her body screams at her for this fresh abuse. She ignores it. She needs to get down the side of the tower before the wind shifts. Right now, she's lucky enough that the tower shields her from the majority of the wind, but there's no telling how long that will last. She needs to move faster, reach the bottom and get her mittens back on before her fingers turn purple.

She lets instinct take over-it's never failed her before-and rappels in large leaps. Each strike of the balls of her feet against the tower rattles through her already sore body. Her toes all hurt like someone stomped them. She's concerned that the pain might be an early symptom of frostbite, but can't worry about it for now as there's nothing she can do. She kicks off, slides down and lands. Again. In the middle of her next rappel, she feels the wind shift, blow ice like razor blades into her face and destroy her trajectory. She twists and smacks the wall hard, takes the impact on her bad right shoulder. She opens her mouth to scream, finds that she doesn't have the air for it. Her grip on the brake in her hand loosens and she slips down the rope unchecked-the speed of gravity minus some measly friction-panics and thrashes for a long few seconds before sense reasserts itself. She clenches her fist, stops hard enough to make every joint in her body pop. She pants and coughs, twists to get her feet between her body and the wall again.

_Suck it up!_

She looks down, sees the ground just a few stories below. One more good leap. Two tops. She grits her teeth, ignores the pain in her body and tears in her eyes, and keeps moving until she's buried to her shins in snow and ice.

She lays her forehead against the side of the tower for a moment, relieved to be alive. Her communicator rings again inside her bag and she swears aloud at it and the person who is undoubtedly calling her. She regrets taking the stupid thing with her in the first place.

She refuses to even look at the screen.

She disengages her rappel device, packs away her gloves, belt and clips. She flexes her fingers, feels the stiffness in the skin, the pain in the joints, and is alarmed at the livid color of her hands. She blows hot breath on and into them, chafes them together and winces at the pain. She moves swiftly to untie the knotted ends of the rope and pulls until the rope comes free. She pulls out her mittens, slips them onto her damaged hands, coils up her rope and moves onward.

* * *

Lightning trudges onward through the mounting snow and despairs of ever reaching Mah'Habara. It's been four hours since she left Taejin's Tower and she hasn't even reached the Sulyya Springs. The temperature seems to drop with each step forward and Lightning wonders at the odds of her freezing to death before she reaches the relative safety of the caves.

She wonders if Snow's dumbass-ery has somehow rubbed off on her.

"Some survival instinct," she grumbles, but the words get lost in the whipping wind. "Remind me again," she says to herself, "why you thought this was such a good idea." She takes a step and sinks up to her shins in the heavy wet snow. "Oh, that's right," she continues, panting from the exertion of moving. "It's because" she takes a breath that burns her lungs, "you're absurd."

"And to top it off..." she exhales and coughs, "you're talking to yourself."

What is wrong with her?

She can feel the cold seeping through the heavy boots, but can no longer feel her toes. This journey is taking twice as long as it should. As she finally reaches the cliffs around the spring, the wind increases to an alarming, painful and possibly deadly velocity.

Rather than offering protection, the cliff walls act like a wind tunnel, collecting the wind and funneling it down the pathway and right into her face. Once she gets into the canyon, the wind is so cold and strong that it actually drives her backwards a few steps for every ten or so she makes. The icy wind feels like it is freezing her eyeballs in her head and she wishes that she'd thought to pack goggles. Then she realizes that she doesn't own goggles, and decides that she's an idiot for not having them in a place where the weather is this brutal. This sort of cold can blind her; at the very least it will chap and windburn her skin. Cold desiccates skin, as does wind, and out here she has copious amounts of both. All exposed flesh will be at risk for splitting and cracking by the time she reaches Mah'Habara.

And if she doesn't reach shelter soon, her extremities will be at risk for severe frostbite and possible gangrene.

_Wonderful. _

Lightning pulls her scarf up to cover her nose, breathes through her mouth hard into the heavy wool, feels the heat and moisture of her breath spread over her face. Her cheeks sting with cold and the moisture from her breath is adding to the chapping, but the brief warmth is worth it. It doesn't last long and she still feels pretty awful. Her mind is getting slow and muddled. She steps, stumbles and nearly topples into the snow. She shakes her head to clear the fog from her thoughts, rolls her head on her shoulders. She feels loose limbed and uncoordinated. There's a near overwhelming desire to just sit down and regain her strength. Part of her screams about survival, about the danger of falling asleep while exposed, but she finds the concern vague at best. She stops moving forward, stares at the blanket of snow with as much longing as she'd felt for the warmth of her bed earlier.

Her training is whispering about hypothermia. If she is hypothermic and she doesn't get into shelter, she's going to succumb and die. No one is coming looking for her anytime soon. If she stops moving, she's going to become food for the animals, or a frozen popsicle. She squints her eyes as much as possible to shield against the elements, puts her head down to protect her face from the high wind and moves.

It takes a miserable eternity to reach the Sulyya Spring. It's unrecognizable and it takes a moment for her to even get her bearings.. The flowers that were here when they'd last walked through are now buried beneath a layer of snow and ice so thick she doubts it will ever melt. The water is coated in white, spots of ice floating on the liquid waters. She'd been hoping this little oasis would be somehow immune to the winter weather and be the same as it was when she was here last with Fang, Vanille, Sazh, Hope and Snow. It seemed so unchangeable, beautiful and terrible then. She feels tears pool and chill where they touch the skin of her eyelids. She leaves them rather than risking wiping ice and snow on her already freezing cold skin.

She wonders if Bismarck met the same end as most of the other fal'Cie. She feels regret for a moment before snapping the hell out of it.

_Have you lost it? _She is ridiculous and absurd. Who the hell gets weepy and nostalgic over a forced journey that nearly killed them and destroyed all of humanity? Who mourns a fal'Cie that tried to kill them?

"Get a grip, Lightning," she whispers. Nostalgia is for wimps. Nostalgia for the worst time of one's life is for morons.

She fills a canteen at the spring, thankful that the water has not yet frozen over as this will be the last fresh water she will encounter until she clears Mah'Habara. She flinches when the icy water touches her already frozen skin. She needs to go now. She makes a hard push for the mouth of the cavern, hard enough to reach it in moments. She hides from the brutal weather in the shelter of the cavern. She makes her way into the cave and collapses onto the floor with a huff. She feels her eyelids droop, shakes her head hard to snap herself out of it.

She gets back to her feet, decides moving is necessary until she warms up a bit. She reaches into her pack and withdraws her communicator, sends Hope and Serah a message letting them know that she's gone away for a bit. She tells them she will be out of touch. She assures them of her safety (though her sanity might be at issue here) and promises to message them again when she reaches her destination.

She does not say where she is going. Hope will know soon enough, and Serah doesn't need to know that 'a bit' means 'forever.' She would like to wait until she is on the far side of Mah'Habara before telling Serah anything about her departure, but now that she spoke to Snow, that option is gone. Besides the journey through the cavern can take as much as two days and she will not be able to send or receive messages once inside. She may be a bitch, but she's not that much of a bitch. Serah calls her every day and if Lightning doesn't respond, Serah will worry. Then she'll find that Lightning left without a word and she'll cry. And Lightning hates it when her sister cries.

She hates the idea of hurting her sister. She peers into the blizzard, back towards their home.

_No!_ She's doing the right thing here. Leaving Serah now will be like ripping off a band aid. It'll hurt, but it'll be brief. Serah will have a whole life to heal. If Lightning stays, Serah's pain will be persistent and protracted.

The communicator starts ringing in her hand and she stares at the display: Serah. She sighs, unsurprised by the fact that her sister is calling. She considers answering before discarding the idea as stupid. Serah will know something is wrong as soon Lightning speaks to her. She'll hear the exhaustion and anger in her voice. She'll worry that something serious is wrong; that something terrible has happened. Then she'll tell Snow (seeing as how she lives with him and everything) and Lightning doesn't even want to hypothesize what that big idiot might do. He might open his big stupid mouth in a temper and blow all their lives to hell. She presses on the power button until the screen goes blank and the device shuts off.

"Sorry Serah," she whispers to no one. She hates upsetting her sister, but she can't live a false life anymore. Staying in that hovel in that seaside town is killing her by inches. She'd rather go back out into the blizzard and die to be honest.

She moves further into the caverns. Mah'Habara is so warm compared to outside that Lightning almost kisses the goddamn stone walls. She shucks her hat and scarf and fur poncho and stuffs them into her pack. She'll keep the mittens for now since she can barely feel her fingers through the material as it is. She pulls her weapon, checks it to make sure the ice hasn't accumulated in any of the moving parts before holstering it again.

She needs to dry off and warm up. Her entire body is aching from the long hours of abuse. She needs to sit down for a few minutes, catch her breath and rest. She hadn't planned any such thing until she made her way well into Mah'Habara.

She hadn't planned any of this, to be honest.

"You're getting soft," she tells herself. Her entire body screams back at her in a crescendo of aching pain.

Lightning leans against the stone and slides to the ground. She is wearier than she'd like. Her right shoulder and arm are throbbing in time with her racing heartbeat, but she thinks she's warmed enough now to say with some certainty that she hasn't broken or dislocated anything. She'll probably be bruised from shoulder to hip, but that's manageable pain and won't cause lasting damage if it isn't corrected.

Her feet are aching and burning inside her boots and she knows she needs to check the damage. She pulls off her mittens with her teeth, sees that the swelling around her injury has gone down with the cold, but all her fingers are now plump and cherry red. They throb and burn so hot that she is tempted to go stick them into the snow to cool them down. She resists the stupid urge, knows the burning is from the frostbite. She moves them until they work well enough to unlace her boots.

She's dismayed to find that her socks are damp. She will need to do something to ensure her feet stay drier. She's just begun this trek, and she has miles and miles to travel. She pulls off the damp socks and finds that her feet match her fingers very well.

Definite frostbite. She hopes it is only mild. She doesn't think there'll be permanent damage, though she fears she may end up with some blisters. Those will be very bad on her feet since she's only just started her journey. She withdraws another pair of socks from her pack and slips them on. She pulls out a potion, takes a small amount and feels warmth spread through her. She could do with a fire and a bit of rest.

After all, someone ruined her night's sleep.

_/"Can I come in?"/_

_Jerk!_

She shakes her head hard. She reaches into her bag for her communicator again. She needs to let Sazh know she's on the way. She knows from his messages that his adventures sometimes take him away from the settlement for weeks at a time. Now that she's put a bit of distance between her and...yeah, anyway, she realizes that she should have contacted him already.

She digs, snags the bag on her finger withdraws it and a black ball of cloth falls into her lap. She eyes the bandana like an enemy, hooks the knot with her bandaged fingers and lifts it to eye level. She knows she should not have taken this token with her. It is a shameful sign of weakness and she is disgusted with herself.

Even in her shame, she still finds herself touching the golden hairs trapped in the knotted material. She pinches one between the pads of her thumb and bound ring finger, rubs the fingers together over the hair as if it were a butterfly wing.

_You're pathetic._

She drops the bandana back into her pack, hopes that a bit of sleep will restore some of her strength to her-enough strength to allow her to leave the bandana behind along with the rest of him.

She puts her weakness and stupidity aside and pulls out the communicator. She turns it on, sees the message indicator flashing. Probably Serah. She can't hear her sister's voice right now. It might break her resolve to keep moving forward and start over. She ignores the message and calls Sazh's communicator. It goes right to the voice mail system and she disconnects rather than leave a message. She has no idea what the hell to say to him anyway. "Hi, I'm on my way," will have him calling her sister faster than she can say Archylte Steppe. It'll be better to wait until she's had a few days of walking to unwind; she'll call again when she reaches the other side of Mah'Habara. .

By the time she puts the communicator away, she finds her eyelids drooping. She skips the fire, despite her yearnings. _It might draw enemies_, she reasons, though she knows she's only making excuses for her laziness. She sighs and settles for lacing up her boots again, pulling on her gloves, wrapping herself in a blanket, curling on the floor and slipping into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

_She stands in her living room, feet dirty and cold from the concrete floor. She hears the lock on the front door click in release. She closes her eyes and holds her breath._

_Three large steps, a hand on her arm whipping her around, fingers in her hair and he says, "just once," before he swoops down and scalds her with his mouth. "Once Light," he breathes against her mouth. The tip of his tongue traces her bottom lip. He whispers, "I promise," before diving back in. _

_She's insane to risk her whole life for one stolen night. Snow groans into her mouth and all she can think about is stealing one night._

_Snow's left hand snakes down her side, fingers skimming between her pajama top and shorts. She shivers at the sensation as his fingertips trace her hipbone from front to back. Fingertips turn to a whole palm cupping the flare of her hip, thumb rubbing in teasing strokes just beneath the waist band of her shorts before he slides his hand around to rest in the curve of her lower back. He licks gently into her mouth as the fingers of his left hand dip beneath the waistband of her shorts to settle dangerously low. She moans, wraps her arms around his neck and her lips around his tongue. She feels his growl vibrate through her whole body as he drags her toward him, presses her against him with the hand on her lower back. She's up on her toes before she realizes that her feet have left the ground. He walks until she feels the wall pressed against her back and the whole, hard heated length of him along her body. Every inch of her tingles and burns. Her muscles are all clenching and relaxing to the rhythm of his tongue moving in her mouth, toes curling and uncurling, brushing the floor with each movement. He clenches the fingers in her hair and pulls downward and his mouth leaves hers. Her lips burn and throb in time with her racing heart. Snow's mouth finds her pulse point, latches on and __**sucks **__so deliciously that she feels it in every molecule of her._

_She gasps and he moans against her, insinuates a muscled thigh between her legs and rocks into her. She's pinned to the wall, feet brushing the floor with each small rock of his hips, electricity firing along all her nerve endings with each rhythmic pulse. His hands slide over her body, under her pajamas, lighting every nerve ending aflame in their wake. Fingers brushing the sides of her breasts: teasing, tickling. She claws at his back, slides fingers up into his long hair and jerks his mouth back up to hers with a hard tug. He hisses and seals his mouth over hers. There's no more subtlety left as he presses his tongue into her mouth and licks every spot inside it. She tangles her tongue with his, slides it underneath, tastes to smooth skin and muscle and sighs. He moans and it vibrates through her mouth and resounds through her whole body. He thrusts against her, cups her breasts in his hands and rubs the calloused pads of his thumbs over her nipples. She's so hot she's sure she must be on fire. She writhes against him._

_He releases her mouth, backs off and breathes scorching breath over her aching lips. She leans forward to taste him again but he holds himself away and she opens her eyes. His eyes are black with lust, only the thinnest trace of blue rings the dilated pupils. "I love you."_

_"Shut up," she says and he rubs against her just right, makes her eyes roll back and her breath catch. He licks her open mouth once, slides his wet-wet mouth over her jawbone. _

_"I need you," he whispers into her ear, and flicks the lobe with his tongue, latches his scalding mouth onto her neck and moves against her again. She feels his teeth pressing into the skin on her neck, just the pleasure side of pain, before the pressure is gone and his tongue traces the outline. He rocks into her again and whispers, "I want you."_

_"You have me." It's the only consolation she'll offer. Just once, she reminds herself. She can have him just once. She needs him. She'd sell her soul for just once right now! Maybe the once will purge this demon from their souls; scratch the itch and sate the hunger. His mouth devours her again and she clutches fistfuls of his coat in her hands, hops up and wraps her legs around him, locking them together around his hips and grinds against him._

_He groans into her mouth and thrusts against her. She feels every last inch of him through his clothes, hard all over and harder still between her legs, through several layers of cloth. He presses against her again and lets her feel his need, ratcheting up her own skyrocketing desire. It's not enough. She needs more. Her fingers prod and grope, work under his coat and under his shirt to get a feel heated skin. He's wearing too many layers and she's still pinned. She shimmies and growls. He drops his hands under her thighs and backs away from the wall and staggers towards her bedroom. He pulls away from her mouth, presumably so he can see where he is going. She pants into his ear, bends to latch onto a spot on his neck before reminding herself that she cannot mark him. He is not hers._

_He is her sister's._

* * *

Horror pulls her from her dream, has her upright before she decides to move. The quick action sparks a wave of vertigo that has her closing her eyes again and almost topples her face first onto the floor. The dream flashes behind her eyelids and she snaps them open again, stunned at her brain's audacity and treachery. Her heart pounds hard in her chest and throat from the cocktail of anger, fear and arousal swirling inside her.

"What the hell was that about? " she asks the empty cavern. Her voice echoes and she winces, waits to see if her impromptu exclamation will draw enemies to her.

She hates Snow…absolutely hates him for making her want him; for making her dream about him. He never should have touched her. She should have broken **his **goddamn hand for daring to touch her! If he hadn't showed up at her house last night, she would have continued on with her life in blissful ignorance of his feelings for her. She would have gotten over the disturbing feelings rolling around inside her-she **knows** she would have.

She wouldn't be frostbitten in frigging Mah'Habara right now, having disturbing dreams about him while she sleeps on the stone floor!

She decides that they're not even real feelings anyway. There's a good case to be made for the idea that this insanity is a consequence of being branded and crystallized. Maybe the entire experience destroyed her higher brain functions!

That seems reasonable. There's no rational reason on any planet that she should have feelings beyond tolerance and irritation for Snow. He's an idealistic idiot.

Which might be the real problem. Perhaps the whole thing is an unfortunate consequence of too much time spent in too close quarters under too much stress.

That must be it.

The journey from Cocoon to Pulse and back was exhausting and soul crushing. She was certain she they were going to fail, and all humanity was going to die. She was lonely and desperate and so guilt ridden over her sister. Snow was optimistic and determined, unwavering in his faith and love. She just latched onto his optimism like a leech in her time of weakness. It seemed okay at the time. He held her back from the pit of her despair, insisted that they would succeed, that they would save themselves, save Cocoon. Save Serah. He kept her from giving up when she felt herself faltering; the unfortunate by-product for her was some sort of…twisted fascination with him. Like he was a flame and she was the mindless moth fluttering around him. And once she noticed him, it was impossible not to see everything: the blue of his eyes that put the oceans to shame; the crinkles at their corners when he drummed up his megawatt smile. His laugh that came from the bottom of his soul and infected everyone. His kind heart when he comforted Hope. His strength in all manifestations. His mouth...

Damn him! She should have kept punching him in his stupid mouth and this would have never happened.

She stands up and grabs her gear determined to keep moving. This whole thing is absurd and the sooner she puts distance (and time) between herself and this...this...**lunacy**, the better!

She walks down the passageway that Atomos carved from the Sulyya Springs. She glances around the high caverns and notices new passageways since her last journey through this underground world.

"A fal'Cie's work is never done it seems," she mumbles.

Lightning ponders the new cavern, wonders what new treasures lay within. The last time she was in these tunnels, she'd been running for her life. For everyone's lives, really. There'd been no time for sightseeing. She considers the new tunnel for a long moment before saying, "Screw it."

She walks the untraveled path.

* * *

TBC...

Okay, I know that there is a whole new mythology floating around now that FFXIII-2 has been announced. I know the Maker is some God with a weird name. Sorry if the odd twist on the mythology in this one upsets your view of canon. I'm not sure how I feel about Square Enix releasing a mythology for a game more than a year after releasing the game.

BTW-That dream was my first ever sexy scene. I do violence. I'm not one to indulge in sex scenes. But seeing as how I'm not one for romances either, this story is going to be loaded with 'firsts' for me.


	4. Time Enough for You and Me

Thanks to those who've read and reviewed. The promised action is coming. Anyone familiar with my writing style knows that I am detail oriented. That may be a bad thing in some cases...  
Wish a Happy Birthday to denebtenoh today! Go visit her stories here and her page on DeviantArt. I have links to both on my profile so you can see her FFXIII artwork.

* * *

"Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,  
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"  
-Excerpt from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Time Enough for You and Me

"So I was thinking," Serah says as she sets the kettle on the stove to boil, "maybe we should try to go out and visit Sazh and Dajh." She smiles at the idea. A distraction seems like just what the doctor ordered. "And I know that Hope will be happy to see you!" She knows that Snow misses his friends-especially Hope, who came to mean so much to him on their journey (not that either of them would ever admit it.) Besides, all this idle nail biting is taking its toll on her. On them. Ever since Claire...she shakes her head. She can't think about her sister right now. It's too upsetting.

She catches her original train of thought.

"Sazh offered to pick us up whenever we want. I think he's still secretly pissed," _or not so secretly_, "that we settled over here instead of near him. We could go after the storm settles. It shouldn't be more than another day or so." She hopes. It's been too long already. Too long and her sister out in it. She stalls the line of thought. She can't go there.

"And it's probably warmer by them," _wishful thinking, Serah_ "and his last message said he could use some help." She turns around, expecting an answer from her fiancé. Any answer will do.

Snow doesn't answer; he doesn't even look like he's heard a word she said. He just stares out the window at the mounting snowfall. He's chewing on the cuticle of his right thumb. She can see the blood welling on his other fingers where he's bitten them all ragged. It's the same position he's been in for days. He's peering out the window like he can stop the snow falling by force of will alone.

"Snow?"

He doesn't answer, doesn't even flinch. She can see the dark circles that look like bruises under his eyes. His entire body is rigid and stooped with exhaustion. She heaves a sigh.

_This is getting old._

"Yeah, so then I'm moving back to Cocoon tomorrow. I thought it might be nice to go live in a giant shell. What do you think, babe?"

"Uh huh," he grunts. "Sounds good."

She shakes her head and smiles, but there's no humor in it._ Unbelievable! _

None of this is funny anymore. All traces of her usual humor are gone.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she declares. She decides to be as ridiculous as the situation. "Sazh and I are going to elope. Wanna be best man?"

"Hmm, sure." She pauses there, waiting. Seconds tick off like eons. She watches his brow furrow in confusion as her words register with him. "Wait, what?" He turns towards her for an explanation.

She raises her eyebrow at him and he lets out a sigh. "I'm sorry, Serah. I didn't mean to..."

"Ignore me?" She says it with as little emotion as possible. This isn't an accusation, after all. Being distracted isn't a crime. Neither is being worried.

He opens his mouth to protest before conceding. "Yeah. I mean no. I'm just..." he turns to look back out the window. He can't take his eyes off the snowfall for more than a few seconds. Hasn't been able to for days.

Enough. It's enough. She can't watch this train wreck anymore. She heaves out a sigh bigger than she is.

"I can't do this anymore Snow." He turns to her looking panicked. She winces, realizes what she said and how she said it. It came out wrong, for sure. She rephrases. "I can't watch you do this anymore."

"I don't...I'm just..." he stammers, trying to cover, searching for an explanation. She lets the moment expand, waits to see if he'll finish a sentence. The silence hangs until it strangles. Another minute, and it will start to stink. She decides to do something before that happens.

"You're just worrying about my sister," she finishes for him.

"What? No, that's not it." The denial is ridiculous and she barks out a laugh at him. **Of course** he's worrying about her sister. If he weren't worrying about her sister, she'd punch him in his face. Claire is out who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. **She's** worrying about her sister! She hasn't slept for her worry. Her eyes feel like someone poured sand into them after days of crying.

All she's done for her entire life, it seems, is worry about Claire. Claire is the most infuriating, loving, self destructive person Serah knows. If Claire isn't hiding, she's fighting. If she isn't fighting, she's running. Right now, it seems she's doing all those things. "Well, I mean, yeah, I don't want anything bad to happen to her." He tries to look and sound casual.

He fails.

"Please! Don't do that. Okay? Don't insult my intelligence." The kettle starts whistling and she shuts off the heat. She pours it into the mugs, smells the chocolate scent waft up and smiles. She can't look at him when she says, "I see what's going on."

Snow walks over to her and takes her arm, turns her around with such care. He's always so careful with her. So gentle. Like he's terrified he might break her in half. Not like with Claire. She's seen him spar with her sister as if she were a man his size-as if she were his equal. The thought rings true and she feels a sting at the knowledge. She is his equal. More than a match for him. After all, she's seen Claire kick his ass!

"Nothing is going on." He's adamant. "Nothing! I swear it on my life, Serah."

It's a relief, though she'll never admit it.

"I know." She believes him. The idea of duplicitous affairs between her sister and fiancé seems absurd. Neither one of them have it in them to do something that terrible. Not to her anyway.

She loves them and they love her. She has no doubts about it.

She sips her cocoa and it warms the cold place that's invading her heart and soul. She places her mug on the counter, adds more hot water, stirs the cocoa in both cups before handing him one. He looks at it like it's a poisonous snake, takes it, sniffs it, sips it, then sets it on the counter with a scowl. She blows on her cup again and says, "It would almost be easier if it were."

"Serah!" He's horrified and appalled. Good! It's about time he joined her in this conversation. It's about time he rejoined their **life**!

"I think I'd know what to do with infidelity," she keeps going. "I could...be mad. Feel betrayed. I could throw things. I could hate you and plan and plot vengeance. But this?" She waves her hand around to in an attempt to convey what 'this' is. He still looks adorably confused. "This...broken pining." He opens his mouth to deny and she talks right over him. She can't hear his denials right now. "What do I do with that Snow?"

"Serah, please!" He looks so broken. She feels terrible for doing this to him when he's so frazzled. He hasn't slept in days. He's been struggling to be strong for her while hiding his own misery. He's been carrying a weight that she's only just now beginning to understand. She feels like a terrible person for adding to it right now but she steels herself and does it anyway. "It's nothing like that!"

_Isn't it?_

She spent days feeling the pain inside him, seeing it on his face. At first she thought it was for her benefit. It didn't take long to realize what was hurting him. Until this, she only had her suspicions. Things were strained and painful in ways that she couldn't understand. When she woke up, it seemed as if her sister and her lover had mended fences. They spent...a long time fighting back to back and side by side. The hostility that she remembered evaporated and left her with a family!

A few weeks into their new lives, she realized that she preferred the hostility; she knew how to deal with that. But averted glances, stilted conversation and weighted silences were beyond her ken. She couldn't figure out what the hell was going on around her. Everything was so anxious. Claire retreated so far into herself that Serah couldn't find a hint of her. In fact, she couldn't find any trace of Lightning anymore. She was more like a ghost haunting that crappy house than the vibrant woman that she used to be. Serah was terrified that she was going to lose her sister even as her sister was standing right in front of her.

Then she did lose her. Claire just...left.

The wounds from that abandonment are still bleeding even now. But one good thing came from it: Claire leaving distilled everything; boiled it down and revealed to Serah all the answers she couldn't quite place.

She would thank her sister if she didn't want to smack her across the face for this stunt.

"Please what?" She asks. She's trying to keep her cool here. She keeps reminding herself that he didn't cause what is happening. She is not angry with him. "I can't compete with this yearning you have. And I don't want to."

"There's no competition," he insists. She feels the irritation explode out of her.

"Of course there isn't! Because the competition up and disappeared, didn't she?" He recoils like she just stabbed him in the chest. His whole body sags and bows under the weight of his secrets and self deprecation. She blows out a breath, takes another one to steady herself. This isn't the way she wants to do this. She doesn't want to blame her sister. It's not fair. And it's not the real problem either.

Claire being here wasn't the problem, and her being gone didn't solve it. Blaming her for any of this would be easy, but incorrect. The truth is much simpler and more complicated than her sister attracting her lover's attention. The truth is that she and Snow are different people now than they were when they fell in love. The things he saw and did changed him; the time she lost and missed changed her.

Not their fault, but miserable all the same. She needs to let Snow off the hook here though. Being mad at him might feel good, but it's wrong.

"Baby, I know that you're not the same person you were before Cocoon fell. I'm not either. I don't blame you for that. It's not your fault. It's not my fault. And it's not Claire's fault either." She puts her hand against Snow's face and watches his eyes close. "We're all damaged and different. We saw and lived through terrible things." She just stagnated through them, and maybe that's the real problem here. She DIDN'T see those things. They're all stories to her. "Maybe we were stupid trying to pretend everything was the same when nothing ever could be."

He withdraws from her. He looks like he's going to fall over any minute-like he can no longer hold himself up under this growing weight. He sits at their table, head in his hands, long legs spread. So miserable and injured, it breaks her heart.

"I love you Serah," he whispers to the tabletop. It's terrible and wonderful to hear it.

"Oh, I know you do Snow." She sinks into the chair next to him. "I never believed otherwise. I love you too. And maybe that's why I tried so hard to ignore what was happening. I figured it would go away and things could go back to the way they were." She wants to touch him, to comfort him, but she needs to stay her course here. She watches him wring his hands together. She lays her hand over his to still the movement. "But we can never go back, and all the wishing in the world won't make a damn bit of difference." She takes a deep breath and whispers, "The heart wants what it wants."

His eyes are threaded through with red when they meet hers. "I never wanted to hurt you. I hate myself for it." His words are like razor blades because she knows they're true. She hates the idea of him punishing himself for things that aren't his fault. "I swore it. And I thought..."

"You didn't. Okay? You haven't." She sighs. He tries to pull his hands out from under hers and she clings to him. How can she say this so he'll believe her? "I'm not saying it feels good," she says and watches him collapse a bit more. She continues with, "but you didn't hurt me." He doesn't believe her, but she can see he wants to. "You've hurt yourself though, haven't you?" _You hurt my sister._

He shakes his head in denial. His eyes flicker to hers and then nail themselves to the table top again. He picks at his scabbing cuticles and she tightens her grip on his hands to stop the ruination. His fingers twitch beneath her hands, but he stops hurting himself. She can feel him trembling beneath her hands.

"So, it was the night you went for a walk, right?" She wondered what the hell got into him that would drive him out into the cold dark night. But he said he couldn't sleep, just needed to burn off some excess energy. Things had been so tense under the blanket of silence in their home that she was happy to have the reprieve. It never occurred to her that he would go to her sister. She thought that perhaps he was lost in memories of fighting. The 'war' had never been an easy subject for Snow or her sister, and Serah never pushed for answers. She suspected that he was wrestling with something enormous. It turns out, she was right. She just didn't realize how desperate he'd become. "I guess I really am dense," she chuckles.

His eyes snap up to hers, rounded and horrified. "Don't ever say that about yourself," he declares. "Never. You're...you're everything." There's a feeling like warm honey pouring through her. Still her hero, even now in the face of this ruin. It would be so easy to let this all go and try and force things back to normal.

No. That's not an option. She needs to get on track.

"Okay. You went to my sister's house and you finally told her..." she finds she's not brave enough to say it aloud for all her bravado. He looks away from her again. "You came home with some interesting bruises." She should have known. She should have seen it. He snorts a humorless laugh, but looks ill. She knows he never wanted to talk to her about this issue. She knows that if it were up to him (and Claire), Serah would never know any of the ugly things in the world.

She loves them and hates them for that. She's not sure which feeling is dominant anymore.

"And then she left the next day," Serah finishes.

"Nothing happened. I swear it." Well, that's not really true. But he's not talking about admissions and fighting. He's not talking about two people ripping each other to shreds to save a third. He's talking about sex. She already knows that never happened. If he'd had sex with her sister, she would have known it the moment he walked back into their home. Maybe before.

"Oh, I know that Snow. You don't have a mean or deceptive bone in your body." She stands up because she needs to do something. She hadn't expected this to be easy, but it's harder than she dreamed by a factor of ten. She pours out his cocoa, pours him out three fingers of bourbon instead. She places it on the table in front of him. He grasps it but doesn't drink. He won't look at her. She sinks back into her chair. "And my sister would never hurt me."

The words are bitter and angry. Serah wishes Claire were here right now so she could smack her upside her stubborn head. Claire ran away rather than face this problem. A woman who squared off against the most powerful beings on two worlds, who stared death in the eye and then spat in said eye, was a coward at heart. She ran from her little sister-a woman who makes her fiancé kill spiders in the bathroom. What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Oh, Serah already knows what Claire will say. She'll claim she didn't want to hurt Serah, and Serah knows that she'll mean that with all her heart. But Serah would like to know what the hell Claire thought she did when she disappeared without a word? When she went haring off on some idiotic self-sacrificing mission into a blizzard.

Serah's going to have words with Claire when she sees her again. _If_ she sees her again. She slams the brakes on that line of thought. It won't do her any good to think such horrible things.

"It's not your fault Snow. I thought it was the battles. The war," she hates calling it that, but that's what it was. It was a war for the survival of humankind. And she SLEPT through all of it! "Or maybe that we'd just grown apart because of the time that we lost." _Time that they stole from us. Time that my sister got to have with you._ She closes her eyes. "But it wasn't any of that."

Snow shakes his head. "I still wanted you Serah. After everything, I wanted our life together."

"I know you did. And I did too." Part of her still does, but she will never speak of that again. "I think that was the problem. We were trying so hard to get back what we'd lost, that we didn't take the time to consider if it was really what we still wanted. We just...picked up where we'd left off and didn't think to wonder if we really wanted to live a life together, or wanted the idea of living a life together.." She wraps her fingers around his hands again. "But I deserve better than being the runner up in my own life and home. Better than being some sort of consolation prize."

He twists his hands through hers and looks into her eyes. "You were never a runner up." He lifts her hand and kisses it. "And you were never the consolation prize." She stares at him for a long moment, sees the truth in his eyes and smiles.

"I know." That's a lie. She wasn't sure at all anymore. He was so distant over the months; and time just pushed him farther away. She watched him disappear and she had no idea how to stop it. Still, he doesn't need to know any of that ever. Her insecurities are her business and will stay hers, now and forever. "But it's nice to hear though."

"I don't ever want you to think that about yourself. I love you." He's so sincere it breaks her heart.

"I know you do." And isn't that the tragedy here? He loves her, she loves him and it's not enough for either of them anymore. "But you're in love with my sister." He flinches like she's burned him, relaxes his grip on her fingers but doesn't pull away. He wants to, but he doesn't. He's got more guts than her sister, that's for sure. He's here dealing with this mess while she's off doing who knows what. "I think I saw that before any of this started. Back on Cocoon, on her birthday."

"No..." he shakes his head. "I loved you more than anything. I couldn't even stand her..." he trails off, face paling. Horrified by his use of past tense, perhaps. Or maybe for insulting Claire. She considers for a moment. _Even odds-no bet_. She nods at him, acknowledging the truth in his words.

"Yes, I know. But she brought out such fire in you. A passion that I never could, no matter what I did." He snaps his mouth shut and furrows his brow. Considering. _He's never even considered it. Interesting._

She needs to move the conversation along. She doesn't want to know if she's right; it's bad enough having the suspicion. She never wants it confirmed, because that would make everything a lie. It's one thing for proximity, situational stress and camaraderie to create one set of feelings while murdering another set, but to find out that she took a back seat from the beginning. That's too much to take, even for her. She keeps right on going. "What I didn't count on-what I **never **counted on-was her being in love with you too."

"She's not," he blurts and somehow pales even more. He's now the color of his namesake. Any whiter and he'll disappear. She feels her face twist up into a mockery of her smile. _And here's the real problem._

"Oh, I beg to differ," she laughs, takes a sip of her cooling cocoa. "You see, because the Claire I know- excuse me, the **Lightning** I know? See, that woman would have put you in traction and then come over here to tell me what lousy piece of crap I was about to marry if you'd showed up in the middle of the night on her doorstep." _Saying and doing who knows what. _She bites the words back. She doesn't want to know what Snow said or did. She may be strong, but she's not an island. She's not a stone. She's not...Lightning.

And isn't that the problem here?

"She probably would have killed you for daring to hurt me." He lets out a small laugh but shakes his head once in denial. "But what did she do?"

He shakes his head hard, picks up his drink and takes a long swallow. She pretends she doesn't notice him trembling. She pretends it doesn't hurt. He wipes a shaking hand across his mouth then presses thumb and forefinger hard into his closed eyes.

"She sent you home to me." The words are more bitter than she intends. She can see they hurt him, and she's not sure if it's her tone or the words themselves. Perhaps it's a mix of both. He loves them both, after all. And doesn't that just **suck?**

"And then she packed up her whole life," she feels the tears burn her eyes and sniffs them back, "and disappeared." She looks out the window into the raging blizzard. "And she's out there getting her stupid self killed." She sobs, feels the fear she's been trying to repress rattle her entire body. It hits her like a gut shot and she feels nauseated and dizzy at once.

Her sister is going to kill herself. She may already be dead. Claire may have sacrificed herself in order to spare Serah's feelings. It's sickening! Then, the tiniest part of Serah is angry about the fact that she may be trashing her life right now for a dead woman, and why is she bothering?

She feels like a terrible person.

She doubles over, feels pain like she's never known rattle through her. The tears clog her nose, turn everything inside to liquid that wants to run out of her body too. She reaches for a napkin and wipes her face and wonders why she can't be one of those women who look beautiful when they cry. Serah's face gets blotchy, her nose spreads, her eyes get swollen and hideous. Claire looks like a damn painting when she cries! Why does Serah have to look like she's been boxing with gods?

"Light will be fine, Serah." He's comforting her and lying to her when he's spent the past five days pacing holes in their floors and refusing to eat. He's been so distracted between worrying and trying to hide it that he hasn't even really noticed his own misery. Or his distraction. Their lives are so screwed.

She doesn't dignify the lie. She pulls herself together and upright in one move. She sniffs, blinks and gets to the agonizing point of this mess. "I want you to go after her."

He recoils, looks like he's considering bolting out of the house into the snow in his light shirt and bare feet rather than continue this discussion. "She would never want that," he assures.

"This isn't about what she wants." _It's about what I want. I can't live this lie as monkey in the middle anymore. _"It's about what she needs." _Mostly._ "She needs you to go after her."

He shakes his head and says with more bitterness than she's ever heard from him. "She needs me to stay away from her." Serah closes her eyes. He's probably right. Claire would not want him to come after her. She's getting angry now. Steaming towards pissed, in fact.

It feels great!

Perhaps this is why Claire decided to bury herself inside the hard shell of 'Lightning.' Claire was a girl who ached and hurt, while Lightning is a woman who rages and fights. It's hard to hurt when wrapped in the embrace of red hot anger. She may have just gained new insight into her sister. She hopes she'll get the chance to tell her.

"Maybe she does. Alright, we'll try this a different way then." She speaks through gritted teeth. "I'm tired of my sister sacrificing things for me. She's been doing it since we were kids. She gave up her childhood to let me have one. She gave up a normal future to let me have one. I'm not letting her give up..." _you!_ She leaves the last unsaid because, against her wishes, it still hurts. The idea of this man with anyone but her makes parts of her hurt that she's never acknowledged before.

They are the wrong parts though. The one that is most injured is her ego.

"I don't want it anymore. I don't need it anymore!" She yells the rest. "I'm a grown woman and I can take care of myself." The last is aimed at him as much as her sister.

These two people who won't acknowledge that she's not some fragile porcelain doll on a shelf. Won't realize that she's a grown woman with her own backbone and her own voice. She may not be able to kill something with her bare hands, but so what? What did that prove?

They may both be warriors, but they're cowards. She just proved she's the bravest one of them all. She just poured gasoline on her life and ignited the damn pyre!

"Your sister loves you," he defends. Snow defending her sister against her is surreal. _As if that is any excuse! _

"And I love her. And I've watched her give up one thing after the next so I could be happy. And I took it all. She gave up her childhood to become a mother. She got a job to give me a nice home. She never let me reciprocate. But I can now and neither one of you is going to stop me!" He looks away. He looks ashamed. She grabs his chin and forces him to look back at her. "You love her. So what are you going to do about it, Hero?"

She watches his horror fade into indecision then into resolution. He smiles at her-a pale imitation of his usual grin, but progress all the same. She leans forward and kisses him, soft and lingering. His lips are dry and familiar and so, so warm. She holds the kiss longer, moves her lips over his to memorize the feel of them. She'll always love him, even if it no longer feels the same. Even if it feels hollow now.

"I'll always love you," he whispers. She giggles against his lips. He always was a smooth talker, and he knows her so damn well. She'll regret what they've lost, but she's not going to cling to the corpse of their love to the detriment of everything. She slides her palm over his face, feels the scruff of an extra two days worth of stubble. He's been so distracted that he hasn't even shaved.

"And I'll always love you too. Nothing will change that." She traces a thumb over his eyebrow, watches him close his eyes and lean into her touch. "You'll always be my first love. And my hero," she adds, because it's the truth. He sniffles, rubs his knuckles into his eye. "You came after me and saved me."

He swoops forward and gives her a deeper, longer kiss. He tastes of chocolate and bourbon, sorrow and memory. He breaks the kiss after a long moment, whispers against her lips and into her mouth: "We saved each other."

"Damn right we did. And now it's time to save Claire." He presses his forehead to hers and nods. "We always knew we were going to be family. We just got it a little backwards is all."

"I never deserved you." The words are breath brushing her lips.

"No you never did," she quips, annoyed at herself for the tears she can't stop. He kisses one away. She's not hurt or angry; not by him or her sister. They no more wanted to betray her than they wanted to destroy Cocoon. They both turned themselves inside out to make her happy and it didn't work.

Still, this ending is heartbreaking all the same. Something that has been a huge part of her life for years is dying. It's the end of her childhood. The end of her innocence. It's her first real sacrifice and the cut is deep and bloody. She's a woman now, sacrificing something dear to her for the sake of something precious. It's the right thing and it's a tragedy. It's unfair and beautiful. "But you might deserve Lightning." She sniffs and sits back, sips at her cooling cocoa.

Snow gives her a small smirk, nods and gets up from the table. She listens to him as he tears through their house, throwing together essentials into his pack. She walks back to her stove and lights the burner. The water in the kettle is still warm enough that in under one minute the kettle is steaming and whistling away. She pours herself another cup of cocoa, wraps her fingers around the mug and listens to her life unravel.

This home was never perfect, but it was hers. It was theirs. They built it to house their love, their family and it is lovely despite the sadness inside it. It will be sad here for a time, alone in a house that's silent but for bittersweet memories. Then it will be filled with shades and shadows. Eventually though, it will just be a place. A nice home by the sea.

Snow stomps into the living room and throws his pack onto the couch. He's shaking out the heavy coat Serah sewed for him during the cooling autumn. She smiles as he shrugs it on, knows that the fur lined leather will keep him warm. She lined his gloves too, and made him a hat that complimented his fashion sense.

Snow's a handsome man. What's more is he is very aware of it. It's one of the first things that she learned about him. She always found vanity unattractive and off-putting, but it looked different on him somehow. Perhaps because it lacked the usual condescension and arrogance. Snow believed himself stupid and unskilled. He treated his good looks as and big muscles as his only attributes.

He never gives a thought to his generous heart or unending loyalty. He never thinks that protecting people should count for anything.

He always sells himself so short.

_So much like Claire. _The thought never occurred to her before. She's always seen Snow and Claire as opposites, but perhaps they are mirror images. Two sides of the same coin.

She smiles around the sting of the thought. It'll take time, but she'll get used to it. She feels her lip quiver, and sucks in a hard breath. Takes a sip of her cocoa.

He sits and laces up his heavy boots. He glances over at her and stops moving. All the fierce determination leeches out of him as quickly as the color in his face. "Serah..."

She shakes her head at him. She can't waver here. It won't do any of them any good for her to cave into what's comfortable and easy. "You need to go."

"I don't..."

"Don't say anything. Alright? Just go." He stands, glances from the pack to her and back again. "You have to go now." He scrubs a hand over his head. Shakes it once and looks back at her. Still her Hero, sacrificing his heart to protect his soul.

She loves him.

And that is why she must let him go. She loves him too much to settle. Or perhaps the truth is that she loves the man who proposed to her, and that person is gone now. This man is no more that Snow than Lightning is her sister 'Claire.' Both of those people are gone. Their trials as l'Cie took them from her as surely as death took her parents. The difference here is that her parents had the decency to stay dead. The war left behind these bodies to taunt and torment her.

Sometimes she wonders why she had to awaken.

She shakes off the encroaching depression. Such ingratitude is beneath her, and she doesn't mean it anyway. She's just feeling sorry for herself, but there'll be time enough for that after Snow is gone.

Time enough...

She raises an eyebrow at him. "Put your hat on."

He does so without comment. Then he pulls on his gloves. He walks over to her and kneels before her.

"Swear to me that this is what you want. That you mean this. I love our life and I don't want to hurt you."

Translation: I'll settle for this life if it will make you happy.

She considers the question. There's damage to her pride, for sure. No one likes to know that someone has fallen out of love with them. But if she's honest, Snow's not the only one. They both tried very hard to carve out a future together from the wreckage of their lives. They held onto their dreams so hard that they didn't realize that dreams were all they were. The reality never quite measured up, though she would have been happy spending her life trying to make reality match her fantasy.

But she's not going to stay with a man who loves another woman-who loves her sister! And she won't remake a man that her sister loves as he is just to suit herself. She wants to be happy, but not if that happiness comes at such a steep cost.

And she deserves far better, damn it! She deserves to be the leading lady in her own life.

"You haven't. But staying with me and living a lie...that would have hurt me. I didn't deserve that just to preserve my delicate feelings." It cuts that they both thought her too fragile to handle the truth.

"That was never..."

"You're both idiots," she barks and he flinches. It feels good to lash out at him, but it's not how she wants this to end. She gentles her tone and her humor. "But I'll forgive that because I love you so dearly." She tugs his hat down over his ears and straightens the collars of his coat. "Now you go. Bring my sister home safe. Promise me!"

He nods, places his hand over his heart and says, "I swear on my life."

She remembers aching with love for this man. Remembers wanting everything two people could ever have and give. She wishes...

It doesn't matter what she wishes.

He stands up and she follows suit. She reaches up and pulls his hat tighter over his ears. He gives a pale, sad smile, walks to his pack and slings it on and heads toward the door. She catches his hand when he reaches it and he turns around to face her. "You be careful." He nods and bends down and pulls her into another kiss. This one is bitter. And sweet. This one is farewell. He walks out the door into the blizzard. The air is frigid enough to burn on contact and she shuts the door behind him. She leans her forehead against it.

_Please save her. _She doesn't know what the hell they're going to do if they lose Claire.

* * *

TBC...

It may seem like I took an easy way out here, but I really can't see any woman wanting to feel like a runner up in her own home. I don't know if you'll like my interpretation of Serah. Part of this interpretation developed in my story Happily Ever After. Besides, I don't like the idea of some stupid little girl being Lightning's sister. If Lightning is strong enough to give up everything for her sister, shouldn't her sister have some measure of that strength as well?  
Someone suggested that Serah thinking of Lightning as 'Claire' was odd to them. I understand that position, but I've always thought that Serah would miss her actual sister. I think that 'Claire' was subverted by 'Lightning'-that becoming Lightning was a survival tactic. So, though Serah refers to Lightning as 'Light' in the game, I always felt that was more out of respect for her sister's wishes than anything else. I think that in her mind, Claire is her sister. Lightning is a stranger who sort of took over when her parents died-a mask she wore until she became the mask. It's an interpretation. It doesn't make it right.

I am open for complaints and comments alike.


	5. The Works and Days of Hands

A/N: Thanks so much for all the feedback! Starting to actually work the plot into this story now. And I just couldn't resist fleshing out the developing world of Gran Pulse.  
Warnings: You might want to put a jacket on. It's getting cold outside, baby! No other warnings at all.

* * *

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."  
-Ayn Rand

The Works and Days of Hands

Hope's never seen this much snow in one place at one time before. Back on Cocoon, the weather, like everything else, was controlled by the fal'Cie. Every day was mild and pleasant. Rain could be turned on or off with a switch. There was no snow unless it was needed or wanted. Fang and Vanille told him that while the Pulse fal'Cie manipulated the environment to suit their needs, they didn't exert any real control over the weather. As a result, Gran Pulse ran the full gamut of weather, from scorching summers to brutal winters and everything in between.

Hope stares at the snow outside with an odd mixture of fascination and trepidation. The world looks beautiful wrapped in this icy shroud. But the temperature outside is dangerous, as is the fluffy, plush looking blanket covering the world.

"Hope? Why don't you come away from the window and have a look at these drawings?"

"Huh?" Hope turns from the window towards his father. Bartholomew sits at their table, surrounded by books and papers, scribbles and scraps. The fall of Cocoon handed humankind a tabula rasa of more than one type. No longer were they fal'Cie puppets; but the price of their freedom was, to put it simply, everything they'd ever known. Humans were starting from scratch with cursory knowledge and sparse resources.

They are at the end and beginning of all things.

"Would you like to see the plans for the irrigation system?" Bartholomew asks, raising an eyebrow.

A year ago Hope would have found the idea of looking at plans BORING! He'd have considered his father asking him some sort of secret punishment; a conspiracy by his parent to transform him into an automaton of epically yawn-tastic proportions. Now, he's more than interested in learning new things; he's fascinated by them.

When he thinks back he realizes that he always wondered how things worked. When he was a small child, he would sneak around and peek into drawers and closets, disassemble electronics and motors. He would sneak around in the underbelly of Palumpolum, crawl through the water and sewer system and stare at the fal'Cie Carbuncle.

Understanding the way things worked fascinated him. His mother called it a healthy curiosity and encouraged him on the sly. His father called him a busy-body and punished him for snooping. The punishments only forced him to get sneakier; they did little to discourage his explorations.

No, his father didn't kill his curiosity. That was the work of his classmates.

When Hope went to middle school, he found that being curious and interested in learning new things singled him out as an oddity among his peers. They called him names and picked on him. He was already small and a bit sheltered, and being mocked and teased felt like torture. So he abandoned his natural curiosities in favor of fitting in and being cool. He stopped exploring the city and started hanging around under the train trestle. He refused to look at the lattice work of the structure. Cool kids didn't care about how things worked or how they were put together. Cool kids didn't care about sewer systems, food supplies or infrastructure; they cared about fashion, hanging out, making out, and the latest video games. It didn't take long before Hope cared about those things too.

And it didn't hurt that his 'geeky' familiarity with the tunnels beneath the city gave all the teenagers new and more interesting places to hang out.

Now he's rediscovering his innate curiosity in a world where cool means precisely nothing. It's harder than he thinks, unlearning his forced apathy. But he's dedicated, and he forces himself to spend hours going over his father's plans. Sometimes he even works up plans of his own-designs for robots, computers or some other little creation.

Since his time as a l'Cie, Hope found that he has refined his mechanical skills. He can look at an item and see just how to make it work better. Sazh is even better at creating, visualizing and building than Hope. His friend's mechanical skills rival those of any inventor and between the two of them, they've put together some pretty cool things.

Despite his natural talents, curiosities and apparent usefulness, Hope is limited in how much he is permitted to do. He is restricted both by his age and his overprotective father. It doesn't help that Sazh agrees with his father, eliminating his only hope for an ally in his campaign to participate in this reconstruction.

He is, quite literally, trapped. Trapped in the body of a fifteen year old boy; trapped in his father's home.

He just wants to hurry up and grow up already! There are so many things he wants to do-things he knows he can do-that his father forbids based on his age. It's frustrating as hell. He helped save humanity. He walked with heroes and yet somehow he has a curfew again. It's absurd. He should be allowed to help fortify their community. He should not be relegated to the background, treated like some child with no mind or voice.

Hope's aggravated just thinking about it.

His father keeps saying, _'when you are older Hope, you may go with Sazh,' _and_ 'when you are older Hope, you may go out into the wilds and protect the settlers.' _When Hope balks at being treated as a child his father says, _'For now, you need to stay here and learn. Read. Muscle we have in spades! We need minds to help create what the muscle will build.'_

The waiting rankles, but the worst part is that Hope knows his father is correct. If he wants to be a man, he must walk the path, not shove his fingers in his ears like a child and insist he be treated as a man. He must prove he's growing up by accepting that he's not a 'grown up.' He figures if he listens to his father, then maybe his father will listen to him too.

So he waits, and he learns; he reads and dreams.

He dreams of towers reaching toward the sky. He dreams of repairing, refurbishing and peopling the empty corners of Gran Pulse.

He dreams of Fang and Vanille returning to something a bit closer to the home they lost five hundred years before. He wants to create that for them. He wants to be the one to shine a light bright enough to abolish the shadows in Vanille's eyes and Fang's heart.

He misses them though they are right here: perfect and eternal.

He longs to rebuild Gran Pulse for them; he hopes that doing so will help them wake up. So whenever Bartholomew offers to show him plans, Hope fights the urge to roll his eyes and revolt in the manner of teenagers everywhere. Instead he sits and goes over every line and note on the drawings with his father.

He'll earn his father's respect, or kill them both trying, damn it.

And so he sits beside his father at the table now and stares at the newest drawings. Hope is surprised by the level of detail attained in the drawings, considering the archaic supplies at hand. They no longer have computers or datalogs to create digital drawings and three dimensional models. Now they have only parchments and graphite. In the summer they will press more flowers into pigments for drawings and paintings, and catch some fish and sea creatures that have natural ink sacs to vary the writing implements. But the winter killed all the flowers and the cold, snow and wind make any sort of fishing dangerous. The risk might be worth taking for food; a luxury like ink would never be worth the cost in lives.

So instead of color, he peruses the shades of gray drawn onto dingy white. Hope tries to visualize the designs as they will look once implemented while his father's hand skirts over the design. He tries to picture the piping, how they will excavate, what materials they will use. He tries to see in his mind's eye how the two dimensional drawings will translate into the three dimensional world. He envisions how the entire system will rely on gravity, running water from the stream and a series of water wheels, rather than depending on the scarce fuels and resources that they salvaged from Cocoon. Those scavenged items will only last so long and Hope knows his father's greatest fear is that they will run out of power before they've set up a suitable replacement power supply and infrastructure. People will descend into total chaos if no stability is provided before the last of the fuel is gone.

"This looks good," Hope says with total honesty. He looks up at his father and notes the pleased look on Bartholomew's face. "Will we use this to replace the crappy plumbing that we have now." He can't resist the dig, and he wonders why the hell he antagonizes his father all the time. His father frowns and sighs.

"Well, we'll have to develop a water treatment facility, and a sewage treatment plant as well. I'm afraid of what diseases might start tearing through the settlements if we don't take care of this soon." Bartholomew looks out the window. "We're running out of time."

Hope looks at his father for a moment realizing for the first time from where he inherited his instincts and sense of fatalism. Hope never believed he had anything in common with his father; now he wonders if their problem wasn't that they were too alike to get along. There's been too much to do for them to worry about their differences this past year. That might never change. Still, his mother was always the buffer between them, and now that she's gone, he wonders if they'll tear one another to shreds.

Thoughts of his mother always lead him to that fateful day on the Hanging Edge. If he hadn't been such a frightened child, his mother might still be alive right now. He cowered in his robe-a Sanctum supplied shroud-while his mother took up arms and fought PSICOM. She died protecting others: Snow, him. She was a hero and he was too angry at first to realize it. All he saw was that she was gone; that she sacrificed herself to save others didn't register. Once it did, he swore he would follow her example. He rubs at the sting in his eyes and swallows a lump in his throat.

He still misses her like an amputated limb. Almost a year later and it still hurts to think of her loss. He looks at his father and wonders if he misses her as much as Hope does. They haven't stopped moving for a year. They've been in crisis mode for so long-first he was a fugitive, then the world ended, now they're building a new society-that he wonders what will happen when things settle. Will they actually mourn his mom, or will her memory just disappear into the enormity of everything around them?

A shrill noise pulls him from his thoughts, startles him so badly that he almost falls off his chair.

"That's your communicator, Hope," his father says without even looking up.

"Oh. Yeah." Who the hell is calling? He left Lightning about six messages last week, but he doubts she's calling him. Something has been off with her and she refuses to talk to him about it yet. Hope hates the distance between them: both physical and emotional. He feels like he's losing her and he can't seem to stop it.

It feels familiar in the worst possible way.

He has dreams where he's back on the Hanging Edge, but instead of Snow holding his mother over the abyss, it's him holding Lightning. He swears he won't let go as he stares into her eyes, but she slips right through his fingers anyway.

Hope shakes himself from his stupor, wishes he could shake the dread as easily, grabs his communicator and checks the name of the caller.

_Snow? What the...? _Snow calling him can't be a good sign. Based on the frequency of calls between them, Hope would have guessed that Snow had no idea how to even work the communicators.

"Hello?" He asks, even though he already knows who's calling.

"Hey kid." Something in Snow's voice sets Hope's teeth on edge, makes his whole body tense.

"What's going on? Is everything alright?" Snow heaves a sigh in his ear and Hope feels his heartbeat accelerate. _Something bad. Whatever it is, it's something bad._ "Snow, what's going on?"

"Have you heard from Light?"

What? Heard from Lightning? Why would Snow ask something like that when he lives less than ten minutes from Lightning?

"Not in a few weeks. Why? What's happening?"

"Damn it!" Snow huffs. There's noise in the background, but Hope can't figure out what he's hearing.

"Snow? What's going on? And what's that noise?"

"Don't worry about the noise." Hope shoves a finger in his opposite ear in an effort to hear Snow through the din on the line. What-is Snow standing in a wind tunnel? "Lightning left and no one's heard from her in a few days now. I was hoping..."

"What do you mean she left?" Hope cuts him off. "Why would she leave?" It's a rhetorical question for Snow. Hope never expects him to have an answer. He expects Snow to mumble, 'how am I supposed to know?' or 'you think she tells me anything?' accompanied by some subsonic grumbling. But the silence on the other end of the phone speaks volumes to Hope.

"Why would she leave, Snow?" Hope repeats, now looking for an answer. "And where would she go?"

"She's heading towards you guys." Hope doesn't miss the fact that Snow skipped over the first part of his question but he lets that go for now in the wake of something far more pressing. Hope stares out the window at the raging storm outside.

"W...wait. Wait." He can't get his brain to engage here. He's trapped in some sort of loop, unable to get past the idea of Lightning travelling in this weather. "How...How was she getting here? I saw Sazh the other day and he didn't mention anything about picking her up."

Snow sighs in Hope's ear again and Hope holds his breath in anticipation of what he's about to hear. "She walked."

"No she didn't," he declares.

"What?" Snow sounds confused by the certainty in Hope's declaration. _Not that confusing Snow has ever been a challenge, _he thinks and immediately feels bad about it. Taking shots at Snow's intelligence-even privately-is neither nice nor fair. Snow is not stupid; he's just a simple guy.

"No, she couldn't have done that, because that's stupid. Lightning's not stupid."

Snow scoffs, and it's an ugly sound. "Well I hate to break it to you kid, but she's sure as hell not a genius either." Hope feels irritation creeping in at Snow's snarky comment. The desire to lash out at Snow's own dumb behavior bubbles up, but Hope represses the urge. It's not the point here. "Anyway, she did it. I spoke to her the day she left."

"She wouldn't...She wouldn't do that without telling me."

"Did you check your messages?" Hope's brow furrows in confusion. "She sent Serah a message the day she left. Said she sent one to you too. She didn't say where she was going in either though."

_Wait. Back up!_ "But she told you?" There's so much more to this story and he's going to get to the bottom of it.

"Huh?" Either Snow is playing dumb, or Hope has been giving him too much credit this past year. He chooses to believe the former. For now.

"She messaged her sister, but she told you?" Snow doesn't respond and Hope wonders for the fifth time what the hell is going on here. "What the hell is going on Snow?"

"It's a long story." Hope rolls his eyes. "Look, kid. Just, uh...if...I mean when she gets there. Just let me know. Alright? We're worried. I mean, Serah's...Serah's worried." Snow's voice trails off and Hope's even more concerned now. Snow hasn't sounded this miserable since...Snow never sounded this miserable. What the hell is going on in Oerba (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days)? "Will you do that?"

_Not if Lightning doesn't want me to_, is his gut response. But Snow sounds so miserable and Hope knows that he's asking for more than just his own edification here. "I'll...I'll let you know. Okay?"

"Yeah." There's a pregnant pause and Hope wonders if Snow has something more to say.

"Don't...don't worry. Light...Light's the strongest person I know." Another laugh. "She'll be fine. " Stating it makes him feel better. Snow says nothing. "Bye, Snow."

"Bye, kid. Take it easy, alright?" He disconnects the call.

Hope stares at his communicator, then looks out the window at the raging storm again. He scans through messages and finds that he did, indeed, miss one from Lightning.

_Taking a trip. Will be out of touch. Speak with you soon. - L._

"Crap," he mutters, irritated at himself for ignoring his communicator and missing Lightning's message. "You'd better be okay, Light," he whispers to the communicator.

"Did I hear you say your friend is coming to visit?"

Hope looks at his father, agog. He didn't think that Bartholomew would have the nerve to listen in on his personal call. "Yeah."

"She's not walking, is she?" Bartholomew looks up over the rims of his spectacles and Hope can hear the warning in his father's tone. Something icy travels the length of his spine.

"Yeah. She is. Why?"

"Damn it!" Bartholomew swears and stands, his chair clattering to the floor. His father never swears. It's enough to set Hope's heart hammering. "What would make her do something so foolish?"

Hope's hackles rise. It's instinct to defend Lightning, even when his father is right. "Don't call Lightning names!"

His father scoffs, then deflates. "I'm not. I'm just...I'm concerned for her well-being."

Hope feels like a jerk for snapping at his father. It's amazing how often he feels like a jerk these days. He wonders if he and his father will ever stop circling each other like wary dogs. "The storm is bad, but Lightning's a survivor." Saying it aloud makes Hope feel better. He knows it's true. If the fal'Cie and the Sanctum couldn't kill Lightning, a little crappy weather sure as hell isn't going to be able to take her out.

"It's not the weather," Bartholomew replies, and plunks back into his chair. The answer is the definition of unhelpful. Hope waits out his father, watching while he rubs at the bridge of his nose in what Hope has come to understand is a nervous gesture. The words are terrifying and vague; add to them his father's nervous tick and Hope feels panic start bubbling through him. Hope sits down across the table from his father, feels tremors in his gut radiating outwards into his limbs.

"What's going on dad?" He stares at his father and tries to extract the information by force of will alone.

"We've been trying to keep this information quiet to prevent panic." Bartholomew paces. "It looks like we've made a gross miscalculation."

"Who's we? And what are you talking about?" He's getting antsy and aggravated. If his father knows something that might impact Lightning's safety, then he needs to spill. Now. "Dad?" He prompts, tone clipped and angry.

His father doesn't seem to notice. "'We' meaning your friend Sazh and myself." No matter how much time Bartholomew spends with Sazh, he always refers to him as 'your friend Sazh,' so much so that Hope wonders if his father believes that is Sazh's full name. Hope is used to the oddity, but not so used to it that he doesn't notice that it **is**, in fact, odd. "We're not sure who they are... but there's a group of 'Marauders' that are roaming around and preying on people they catch out on Archylte Steppe."

Marauders? Gangs of people? His father is worried about PEOPLE? It sounds ludicrous in a world where the animals are as tall as mountains; where predators the size of aircrafts stalk the skies and menace civilians. A world where the weather shifts so quickly that a person can die of exposure in hours.

A world that has been called Hell-and rightly so!

"They're just people. Lightning can handle people. She fought the fal'Cie!" He's not sure who he's trying to convince.

"I understand why you would think that Hope, but I haven't told you the whole story."

"Well, why the hell haven't you?" Hope snaps. It's one thing for his father to hold him back and impose curfews on him, but withholding information is a violation of trust that infuriates him. He may not be a 'grown up' yet, but he sure as hell is not a child either!

"I thought we would have time, and there were important things to address..." Bartholomew trails off as if he realizes how lame his excuse is. "But you're right. We should have told you." He pauses and reconsiders: "**I** should have told you."

"So tell me now then." His father looks like he would rather eat glass than tell this story. It makes Hope even more nervous.

"These are not just **people**, Hope. From what we can tell, this is an organized group with some paramilitary characteristics." Bartholomew meets Hope's eyes and says, "These people are trained, Hope. Do you understand? They're trained and they're preying on small settlements. They are doing..." his father pauses and clenches his fists. "They're doing unspeakable things."

"I don't..." he gropes for the right word. "Understand," is what he settles on, but it seems weak somehow.

"No one can understand this sort of madness and desecration. Not even after all the horrible things we've seen." There's a long, pregnant pause where Hope's worst imaginings spin out through his head in full Technicolor. He has no idea what to say. How can this be true? Why did his father hide the information? How many people have been attacked? How many casualties have they suffered?

How long had this been going on?

"Where did they come from?" is the first question he asks aloud. It's probably the least important, but he finds he must know. From the look on his father's face, Hope guesses it's the one question he doesn't want to answer.

"We don't know. But your friend Sazh did a bit of digging and based on his findings we've hypothesized that these men may have been left behind in prisons and such on Cocoon."

"Prisons?"

"Yes. In all the madness of our escape it seems that no one thought to save the prisoners. They were left behind, locked up, with no one to care for them. So every one of them was given a death sentence no matter how petty their infraction." The full meaning of his father's statement sinks in. They'd left people behind, locked up, unable to care for themselves. Hope tries to imagine the horror of being shut away on a dying world, abandoned and left to starve and die by those who were supposed to keep charge of them.

It is a horrifying and inhuman thought.

He realizes that his father has been speaking the entire time he's been meandering through the horrors of his imagination. "...until someone let them out, organized them and set them loose on the rest of us. And I believe they have quite the axe to grind."

"Who let them out?"

"We're not sure. We're not even sure if that's who they really are. But what we do know is that they are dangerous and organized. We assume they have military leadership. Possibly some sadistic faction in PSICOM who have found themselves unaccountable and unmonitored. Those sorts of persons would be like metaphorical children in candy stores in this new world."

"Why do you think it's soldiers?" Hope knows all about the sadism present in PSICOM. His father seems to forget that Hope was present during the massacre known as 'The Purge.'

"Sadists are present through all walks of life, Hope..."

Great! His dad is gearing up for a lecture when all Hope wanted was to know if the presence of soldiers is speculation or fact. Hope rolls his eyes but keeps his mouth shut and lets his father continue.

"...but not all of them have such specific training. The attacks look well coordinate despite their brutality. The hits come at sundown or sunrise. No one escapes them. Not one person. People are being systematically rounded up and..." he watches his father pale, feels himself go cold. Bartholomew shakes his head. "Never mind."

"So they're killing people." Hope knows it sounds lame and stupid, but he just can't seem to get his head around the idea that with so few humans left alive on two worlds that anyone would just destroy even more life. From the look on his father's face as he nods, Hope can tell there's yet more that Bartholomew isn't telling him.

"To be accurate, they're killing men." The word killing has an edge to it that tells Hope more than his father ever would. More is happening here than simple murder. His voice is grave and his eyes are serious when he says: "They're taking the women."

Hope feels sick to his stomach. He considers calling Snow back immediately to demand that he go out and hunt for Lightning right now. He stomps on the idea, realizing the absurdity in the notion of Lightning needing to be rescued. He looks out the window, pictures Lightning out on the Steppe alone, in this snow, surrounded by monsters and enemies and now predatory men. Alone and uninformed...

"I need to go!" He declares and looks at his father, preparing himself for a fight.

Bartholomew shakes his head, then rests his elbows on the table and buries his face in his hands. "I know," he whispers and Hope nearly falls over in shock

"You do?" _He does?_ Hope expected a battle, not...understanding. It doesn't make sense.

Bartholomew stands up and walks over to Hope, puts his hand on his shoulder. "I don't want you to go. I want you here. I want you safe. But you're your mother's son."

The mention of his mother feels like a knife in his chest. He feels his eyes burn and feels ashamed at his weakness. Wasn't he just trying to be a man? Men don't cry! Hope wipes away the tear and sniffs, then looks back at his father.

His father pulls off his glasses and wipes his eyes.

"I see her every day in you, you know." Bartholomew walks to the sink and pours himself a glass of water. He takes two big gulps, wipes a hand across the back of his mouth. "Sometimes I can't bear it," he admits. Hope feels his face heat and his fists clench. "I loved her so much, and seeing her in you is...incredible. You're all I have left of her and the idea of losing you..." Bartholomew clears his throat and sits back down.

"Your mother was never one to sit back if others needed help. She wouldn't have been her if she hadn't taken up arms during The Purge." Hope can't look at his father anymore. He can't watch his father tremble as he speaks of a lost love; a lost wife. How could Hope have doubted this man's love for his mother? Or himself, for that matter? He looks out over the frozen world beyond the window, holds his breath in anticipation of his father's next words. "And I know you can't just sit here either. So go ahead and find your friend, and bring her home safely."

Hope is moving before his father finishes his sentence. "HOPE!" his father calls as he makes it to the threshold of his bedroom. He stops but refuses to turn from his intended path. He needs to get to Sazh, get the aircraft and go search. "Be careful and come home."

"I will," Hope agrees as he pulls his empty pack from under his bed and starts to fill it. He finishes quickly and layers his clothing. He pauses to take stock of his room, spots the box on his dresser and lifts it with shaking hands. He takes the key from around his neck and unlocks the box. He lifts the bandana from within and unfolds it to reveal the crystal within.

Alexander.

Hope knows that the Eidolon will not respond to him anymore, assuming it even exists. The crystal is more like a good luck charm. He wraps it back up and slips it into his pocket.

He grabs his pack and slings it on. He looks out the window towards the nearby Cocoon. The storm conceals it, but he knows it's there.

He knows **they're** there. Always there, waiting. Hope swallows.

He's lost too much already. He refuses to lose Lightning too.

* * *

The walk to Sazh's house usually takes thirty minutes. The snow, cold and wind triple the duration and by the time Hope catches sight of Sazh's house, he's frozen nearly through. His feet burn and throb in his boots. He looks down at them, spots the black laces flailing around in the storm like a shredded flag. He bends at the waist, nearly topples face first into the snow when the weight on his back shifts higher on his shoulders and falls victim to gravity. He bends his knees, regains his balance and barks out a loud curse that would make Fang blush. He exhales a white breath and reaches for his laces. He's ham-fisted, fingers refusing to bend inside his gloves. It takes three tries to get the laces tied, and that is only after he gives up on traditional bows and went with the 'bunny ear' technique. He feels like a five year old again, his mother making a big ear and a small one, and saying 'the bunny goes around the tree, into the burrow and...pull Hope.' He sniffles at the memory even as he follows the instructions and ties a perfect bow with his frozen fingers.

He stands upright; the weight on his back shifts again, falling hard enough to nearly jerk him onto his ass in the snow. He shakes off the embarrassment, balls up memories of his mother and focuses on moving forward. Every part of him feels frozen and heavy and he wonders what the hell Lightning could possibly be thinking trying to journey across the world in this weather when he can't even make it across his town.

She is the bravest, stupidest person he knows.

He reaches Sazh's door and thumps on it with a swollen hand. He underestimated the dangers of the storm. He's going to need to reassess his gear if he's going to live through this journey. Of course in order to do any of that, he needs to get inside and get warm. He pulls both hands to him and sticks them in his armpits, and kicks at the door gently with one club foot, then rests his head against the wood and wonders if it's possible that Sazh is away. He wonders if he'll make it back home before he loses feeling in all his extremities.

Or, you know, dies. Whatever.

The door disappears and Hope topples forward like a felled tree. He doesn't even pull his hands out from under his arms to brace himself. He's too cold to move and figures his face will break his fall nicely, thank you very much.

Hands snatch him mid-fall and Hope decides he'll be relieved later. He's too cold to feel anything right now.

"Hey now!" Sazh exclaims. He pulls Hope up and in and kicks the door shut behind him. He turns Hope around to look at him and says, "Hope?"

"Hey Sazh!" Hope gasps through chattering teeth before choking on the words. The cold air seems to have aggravated his lungs. And everything else!

"Kid, what are you doing here?" Sazh takes Hope's hat off, reaches for a towel and throws it over Hope's soaked hair. "You're damn near frozen through!"

"Tell me about it."

"Get out of that coat and those boots!" Sazh walks over to the sink, fills a kettle and sets it on the stove to boil. Hope uses his teeth to peel his gloves off and gets his first look at his reddish-purple fingers. Sazh turns around and says, "Damn it!"

He storms over to Hope and works the buttons on his coat, then the laces on his boots. He yanks the first boot off before Hope is ready and nearly sends Hope backwards through the front door. Hope is more prepared for the second one and uses his aching hands to brace himself. Then Sazh yanks off his pack and coat with more force than necessary.

"OW!" Hope yells, though the entire episode is more hurtful to his ego than his body. Sazh seems to know it too because he doesn't miss a beat filling a bowl with warm water and setting it on the table.

"Sit down, shut up and put your hands in that water." Hope follows the instructions. He winces and flinches away.

"That's hot!"

"No it's not! Your skin is frozen. Put your damn hands in the damn water!" Sazh stoops and pulls off Hope's socks. Hope looks down at his feet and is happy to see that they look pale.

"Damn it! Sazh slides another basin beneath his feet. "Put your feet in that now!" Sazh stands up looking angrier than Hope can ever remember seeing him. He looks like steam is going to shoot out of his ears. Sazh opens his mouth to yell some more...

The kettle whistle interrupts.

Sazh marches over to the kettle and shuts off the heat. He grabs a mug and spoons something into it before pouring in the water. Hope smiles at the thought of hot cocoa. No one has made him a cup of cocoa since his mom. He smiles at Sazh when he places the mug in front of Hope. Hope stares into the mug at what appears to be cloudy water. He frowns.

"What's that?"

"Hot water and sugar. The breakfast of champions."

"Pass."

"Drink it. This isn't a debate. That's frostbite genius! You need warmth, fluid and sugar and this is the fastest delivery system I have for all three." Sazh gives him the hairy eyeball. "You don't drink it and I'll hold you down and pour it down your throat. And don't think I won't do it either!" Hope scowls at the threat.

Hope lifts his hand out of the cooling water and takes a sip of the sugar water. It's too sweet and he flinches at the taste, but Sazh is shooting him a death glare. He takes another sip, finds the taste far less offensive the second time. Sazh changes the water in the bowl and places it back in front of Hope.

"Wanna explain to me what the hell you're doing wandering around in this storm? I thought you had more sense than that."

"I do. And I'm not 'wandering.'" Hope finishes the atrocious drink and scowls at the dregs on the bottom. "Lightning is."

"Make sense, kid! What are you talking about?"

"Lightning is on her way here. Now. In this."

Sazh stands up and walks to the counter. He leans against it and stares through the sidelights on the door. "And you know this how?"

"Snow called me. He's...concerned." Terrified is more like it, but Hope keeps his judgments to himself.

"Well he sure as hell should be!" Sazh barks. Then he mumbles, "Crazy woman. What can you be thinking?" Sazh's posture radiates tension.

"We need to find her," Hope declares.

"Hope, you got frostbitten walking to my house. How are you going to walk across the Archylte Steppe?"

Hope doesn't miss Sazh's omission of himself from the scenario. A lead weight settles in Hope's gut. It never occurred to him that Sazh would refuse to help him save Lightning. "I was hoping that we'd fly," he mumbles.

"Not in this weather we won't."

Hope feels desperation kick in. He can't do this on his own! "But..."

"No buts," Sazh snaps and then turns to the window. "Getting ourselves killed won't do anyone a damn bit of good." He heaves an enormous sigh and smacks his forehead into the cold glass before him. Hope keeps quiet, knows that Sazh is considering his options and to talk right now might tip the scales in the wrong direction. Sazh murmurs, "Damn it, Soldier." Hope watches the words fog the glass and then disappear. He needs to say something.

"Please," he barely recognizes the small voice but it seems to get Sazh's attention. He turns and faces Hope. "Please Sazh. I can't...I can't lose Lightning." Hope feels his lip tremble and his face heat. He's supposed to be a man now. Men don't blubber and babble. Men fight for what they want. But he doesn't feel strong right now. He feels like the same terrified boy on that catwalk on the Hanging Edge, watching his mother die.

"Haven't we lost enough?" _Haven't I lost enough?_ "How can we lose her too?" Sazh flinches. "I mean, we just watched..."

"I know it, Kid." Sazh walks over and sits heavily in the chair next to him. He puts his head in his hands. "I miss them too." Sazh looks out the window, stares into the storm in the vague direction of Cocoon, Fang and Vanille. "Don't think I forgot it. They saved us all and I can't help but be pissed at them for it. How's that for gratitude?"

Hope feels like he's balanced on a precipice. Sazh hasn't sounded this bitter since the Sanctum took Dajh from him.

"Alright, kid." Sazh acquiesces. "You're right. I'm done losing the people I love. We can't fly, but I've been working on something that we can use." Hope tries to jump up. "Hey now, wait a minute!" Hope looks down at the basin he's standing in and looks back at Sazh. "Put your ass back in that chair. It's going to take me some time to get ready and pack up Dajh to drop at your dad's house. And you need to thaw out."

"We don't have..."

"Time? We have as much time as we need. The Soldier is tough. She's got a better chance surviving this mess than we do, that's for damn sure."

Sazh moves like a whirlwind through the house. Hope hears Dajh's quiet protests to being yanked from sleep. Sazh's voice is a melodious murmur. He speaks too softly for Hope to catch words, but the cadence lulls him, reminds him of their travels a year ago. Whenever he couldn't sleep, he'd eavesdrop on conversations between his friends. His snooping gave him insight into Sazh's hopes, Snow's fears and Lightning's sadness. They discussed topics with one another that they never would have broached with him. He was the 'Kid' and was shielded from ugly truths and fears.

It pissed him off then. It still pisses him off now.

Sazh enters the room bundled up like a mummy and slips out the door without a word. Hope stammers and curses. Giggling from the corner startles him.

"Ooh! You said a bad word!" Dajh says, pointing at him, eyes round as saucers and lips quirked up in a small smile.

_Crap! How did he not notice Dajh?_ Hope blushes to the roots of his hair. "Uh," he rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn't have said it and I'm sorry. It's our secret, okay?" The last thing Hope needs is a lecture from Sazh about swearing within earshot of his son.

Dajh smiles at him and says, "Okay Hope." Dajh walks over and sits on the floor to tie his boot laces. Hope notes him looping the laces like bunny ears and he smiles, feels the sting in his eyes. "Don't worry. Daddy says bad words all the time when he thinks I can't hear him." Dajh gives Hope a devious smirk and Hope feels his own shock smearing across his face.

He bursts out laughing as Sazh comes back into the house.

"What's so funny?" Sazh looks at Hope and over at Dajh. Dajh shrugs at his father and Hope only laughs harder. "Have you lost your mind kid?" Sazh walks over and drops two pairs of socks and another sweater next to Hope on the table. "Put all that on. We're going to be in the Snow Kat-that's what I call my newest creation-but it's still colder than a witch's..." he glances at his son mid-sentence. "Well anyway, it's cold. And you can't afford to let that skin refreeze."

Hope laughs even harder, thinking of Dajh's confession about his father's bad words. Sazh gives him the stink eye for a minute before turning towards his son. "Dajh, do you have your things?"

"Yes, dad."

"You're a good kid, you know that?"

"Yes dad!" Dajh agrees.

"And humble too," Hope mumbles. Sazh smacks Hope upside his head without missing a beat and continues talking to his son.

"Would you mind helping me out here and putting this bowl in the sink?" Dajh rushes over and grabs the bowl. "Careful not to spill the water!" Hope watches Sazh watch his son and finds himself missing his mother all over again.

Hope loves his father but it takes effort and work to talk with him, whereas everything between his mother and him was natural and unforced. Like Sazh and Dajh.

Hope shakes his head, dries his foot off with the towel Sazh gave him and slips the sock on. The soft material feels like sandpaper and he can barely stifle the yelp at the pain of contact.

"That hurts?"

"Yeah." Sazh disappears for a minute and comes back with a roll of gauze.

"Wrap them first." Hope starts winding the gauze around his feet and Sazh watches before saying, "Just so you know, the pain is actually a good sign. It means you still have feeling." Sazh pulls out some bizarre contraption that looks like the bastard love child of a datalog and microwave.

"What's that?" Hope asks as he winds gauze around his other foot then pulls the sock over it.

"This? This is a locator." Sazh fiddles with a knob that Hope thinks he may have stolen from a Hoplite corpse.

"What the hell..." Sazh shoots him a glare and Hope realizes that Dajh is giggling away on the other side of the room. Hope winces. "I mean...what's a locator?"

Sazh heaves a sigh and fiddles with the knob some more. He taps the screen with a fingernail and the furrow in his brow melts into a smile. "You know those communicators that I built?"

"Yeah." Hope rolls his eyes. He helped Sazh build them but does he ever get any credit? **NO-O!**

"Well, I added a feature to them that I never told anyone about." He turns the screen towards Hope and points at a flashing red light. "So that we could find anyone who might get lost."

"That's Lightning?" Hope asks, feeling optimistic for the first time in hours.

"That's Lightning!" Sazh sounds pleased. "Or it's her communicator at any rate. And it gives us a starting point." Sazh stands up and walks over to Dajh, scoops up the boy and gives Hope a baleful look. "Hurry up. We need to get our asses moving if we want to reach the soldier before sunrise." Hope is out of his chair and in his coat before Sazh finishes his sentence. "And I'm going to give that woman a piece of my mind, let me tell you!"

Hope is looking forward to that particular lecture.

* * *

TBC...

I can't resist pulling Sazh into any story. I'm tired of him being relegated by fanfic writers everywhere to the background. I think he's smart and funny. And you had to know HOPE would be here too!


	6. Certain Half Deserted Streets

I'm dedicating this one to eleanorlavish for being awesome and reviewing chapter 5 twice. You are awesome! And thanks to everyone else for your feedback and support. I hope you enjoy this chapter.  
We're back to Lightning in this chapter since I missed her so very much.

* * *

"Winter is not a season, it's an occupation."  
-Sinclair Lewis

Certain Half Deserted Streets

Mah'Habara is far more pleasant now than it was when they were all running for their lives. The caverns lack the urgency and pervasive doom that they held last year. The choice to follow the new path rather than the familiar one was foolish and impulsive. Lightning considered turning back several times before saying a silent 'Screw it' and continuing onward. She is no coward, and there's nothing in these caverns she can't handle.

The new tunnel turns out to be a great choice, much to her surprise. The fresh carved cavern is free of not only the debris of destroyed machines that litters the well-worn path, but the still active self-repairing machines of war that are an animated testament to Pulse's rich and war-filled history. Not having to battle the machines is a pleasant surprise. The Pulse machines are dogged and difficult enemies. Considering the throbbing in her broken hand and the aching in her body from her impromptu smash against the side of Taejin's Tower, Lightning isn't sure she'd be up to the task of taking them on.

Of course, the new tunnel has its own hazards as well. There are loose rocks on both floor and ceiling, fresh sinkholes that almost break her ankle a few times, and a few scattered nests of Ceratosaurs that she figures most likely sought shelter from the terrible weather in the warm caverns. All of these things make the journey more interesting and difficult than a simple walk in a park, but Lightning can't seem to mind any of it.

Besides, walks in parks have never been her bag. Give her a good spar over a stroll any day.

Sure, the journey down the new tunnel tacks an extra day or so onto her journey, but being inside after close to a full day in the harsh weather feels fantastic. The cold that invaded the core of her body has dissipated. The skin on her fingers has regained its elasticity. The swelling is gone, and the coloration is once again normal. Her hands feel tip top! Not to mention how thrilled she is that she managed to avoid developing any blisters from the frostbite on her feet.

All in all, she feels better than she has in months.

Moving on agrees with her, it seems. Having a plan (vague though it may be) improves her general outlook on life by two hundred percent. Each step forward lightens the burden in her heart, gives her something to think about other than the four walls of her rotting cage, and the big blond holding the other end of her leash.

_Not going there._

A shift in her surroundings pulls her from her quiet thoughts. It's a small thing, so small that it takes a moment to sink in.

She's headed upwards.

Lightning feels the change in the incline of the path as a small burn in her calves and a stretch in the soles of her feet. She's heading back towards the surface and is not sure if she feels relief or disappointment; perhaps it's a bit of both in equal measure. The end of this path marks the beginning of the next leg of her journey, true, but it also means she'll be back out in miserable, freezing weather.

Her thawed toes ache and weep in anticipation of refreezing.

She continues walking up the slight incline until it grows steep. She's doubled over at the waist in an effort to keep her center of gravity stable. When the path shifts to an even steeper angle, she drops to all fours to haul her way up the slope. Her right hand still hurts where she fractured it and she finds herself favoring it. The few days of relative rest haven't helped as much as they should have. She guesses that she did a good deal of damage to her hand in her exhausting ascent of, and terrifying descent from Taejin's Tower. Based on the constancy of the pain, she guesses that her hand will require some corrective surgery at some point.

She misses the days when a small spell would have knit the bone in minutes. She doesn't miss being a l'Cie per se, but at times misses the convenience that the power and magic afforded her. She sometimes misses being something other (more?) than human, and no longer subject to all the frailties thereof.

There are no words for just how screwed up she is these days.

Reaching the top of the incline is more trouble than it should be. It leaves the knees of her pants dirty and worn, and her right hand aching and bruised. The air at the top is half the temperature of the rest of the cavern and she shivers and curses. She should be happy that she's near the end of the tunnels.

She's really not.

Being unhappy is not unusual for her these days, so she dismisses her feelings and concentrates on what matters: surviving. She pulls off her pack and pulls out her cold weather gear, dresses quickly. She pulls on the sweater and poncho, slides on her climbing gloves for now. She'll put the mittens over them when she's outside. She starts moving again.

"It's all about layers," she says to the empty cavern. It whispers back an echo and she smiles. Echoes have been her only companions for the past few days. She's found herself speaking aloud to nothing just to experience something like a conversation.

When did this happen? Lightning never fancied herself a social creature. She was always happiest on her own, doing her own thing. Being alone never translated into being lonely for her as it did for some people. She enjoyed the peace and solace she found by herself. She never considered herself antisocial; just a solitary person. An island unto herself.

Now she finds herself craving the laughter she shared with Fang, missing the quiet conversations with Sazh, longing for the mutual affection she shared with Hope, and yearning for the comforting evenings on watch with Snow, getting to know one another by sharing memories of their one common link.

/Can I come in?/

Snow. It seems like he is the last station for all her trains of thought these days.

She stomps on the budding sentiment before it has a chance to germinate within her. There are important things to focus on now. She has a few days with herself, testing her own mettle and skills against the dangers of Gran Pulse. Once upon a time, such a challenge would have been more than exciting. It would have been enthralling and irresistible. She misses the days when things were simple.

She stops moving, brain tripping over her last thought.

Did she just think of the days when the fal'Cie kept them as pets, held humanity's existence in the palms of their metaphorical hands, murdered at will and ruined everyone's lives as 'simple times?'

Why yes; yes she did. And what's worse is that she meant it.

She sneers and moves faster. She is so damaged it's ridiculous. This is why she never delves into the darkest reaches of her heart and mind! It's like kicking over large stones: something slimy and nasty is always living underneath.

She supposes that she knew she missed being a soldier on some basic level. Having orders to follow and a chain of command kept things simple. Right and wrong were dead issues. There were orders to follow, and targets to destroy, and that was it. It never occurred to her to question the legitimacy of her orders, or the motivations of her commanding officers. She was a cog in a larger machine, and that machine only worked if all the parts did their jobs. She appreciated the simplicity of the overall design, and was happy for her place in it.

Then the Pulse Vestige appeared, the Purge happened and Lightning's entire world crumbled around her. For the first time since enlisting, she questioned her beliefs. She questioned her orders.

She questioned her entire life: everything she ever did, knew, thought, or was. She was forced to confront the entire hierarchy of her life and then tear it down to its foundations. It was as terrifying as it was satisfying.

After the fall of Cocoon and the end of the war, things normalized somewhat. There was total chaos followed by an uncomfortable and tenuous calm. No one quite believed that things were over-least of all Lightning. But days passed and life resumed. Days turned to weeks then months and there were no more apocalyptic threats; just the day to day dealings of life.

No more was every conversation about surviving the next battle. Soon conversations turned to routine things-food and shelter, constructing and rebuilding; grieving, mourning and moving on. She took part in discussions even as she tried to figure out where she fit into this brave new world. She was lost and flailing in this normality. She was alone where her friends all had families-Hope had his father, Sazh his son, and Serah and Snow had each other and the family they would make. She was an outsider in her own life and the only other family she ever knew-the Guardian Corps-no longer existed. She was a woman with no family and a soldier with no army.

But that didn't stop her from trying. Lightning is many things, but she's no quitter.

Every day she would try, and every day she felt as if she were trying to shove square pegs into round holes. She contorted herself to make it work, bent and twisted until she was tied up into knots. She never fit, and it never fit her. She knew it but ignored it; figured she could fake it until she made it.

Then Snow showed up on her doorstep and upended her entire world for the second time in a year. He nuked her entire world view with a look and a stolen kiss.

She rubs at the growing ache in her head. She hates thinking about these things. Thinking about the past never did her a damn bit of good. Thinking about Snow and the bandana secreted into her bag is forbidden.

He is not now, nor will he ever be, hers to want.

So yes, things were simpler then. Life was easier when she had a clear, distilled purpose. Life was easier when her sister was innocent, Hope had a mother, and she hated Snow. Life was simpler before she ever heard the names Fang and Vanille. It was easier to believe that Gran Pulse was some sort of nightmare hell world full of monsters and demons.

It was easy, but she wouldn't go back. She wouldn't trade the unhappy present and the uncertain future for that simple past. To even indulge the idea is a blasphemy against all those who suffered and died to buy their freedom.

It's an insult to her lost friends.

Thinking of Fang and Vanille makes her ache. She's not sure how two people she knew for such a brief time could come to mean so much; how she can miss them in her day to day life when they were never actually part of it. Their time together was brief and unusual. She shouldn't miss them, but she does. Every day. She thinks of them and knows that she is selfish for wanting them here. She knows that they too would be outcasts in this world. If they were here, she would have in them kindred souls. She might once again have a place...

The cold yanks her from her thoughts and she's happy to be rid of them. She needs to stop lingering in the darkest corners of her mind and soul. She fears that one day she will not return from them.

She feels the wind before she hears it roaring. It's got the keen edge of her Edged Carbine, and the bite of a Jabberwocky. She burrows deeper into her poncho and contemplates putting on a third pair of socks before deciding that it would be only be a waste of dry clothing. She calculates the distance across the Archylte Steppe and decides that she's going to need all the warm, dry clothes she can get.

* * *

Coming out of the dark caverns is a blinding experience. The storm, it seems, has passed and the sun is out in all its glory. The effect of the play of light over the white world is breathtaking.

And eye scorching.

Lightning squints at the intense brightness that is a combination of radiant and reflected light. The entire landscape glows like the sun. The world sparkles and glows brighter than the clearest diamond ever polished. The virgin landscape looks pure and holy. Looks can be deceiving, she knows.

She blinks and her viewpoint shifts. The world no longer looks like heavenly bodies or gemstones to her eyes.

It looks like crystal. She feels vaguely nauseated by the thought.

She remembers landing on Lake Bresha after defeating Anima. Everything looked like the clearest ice without the accompanying cold. It was undeniably beautiful, despite her complete lack of interest in admiring landscapes. The crystal was an end of life-all the life in the lake, all the life in her sister. All the life in herself. She ignored the sparkling wonder and moved onward then as she must do now. She moved onward and discovered her sister-perfect and eternal in her crystal casket.

She needs to stop thinking about the past. She can feel the panic and depression that nearly consumed her that day resurfacing. That was then, this is now.

That was crystal, and this is ice.

She tries to focus on the positives. Serah is alive and happy. The storm is over. She is moving on to start a new life. She lets the last of her unease disappear into the sunlight around her, and just lets herself be pleased at the turn in her luck. Maybe the rest of her journey will be pleasant...

She thinks about that for a moment.

_Optimism is for idiots. _

She smacks herself in the head before her thoughts drift to the most offensive optimist she knows; before she can think of his smirking mouth and blue eyes...

_Enough!_ She sets off at a steady pace, mindful of the blanket of snow and what dangers might lurk beneath it. She refuses to fall prey to optimism and all its ironic foibles.

Life has a tendency to bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

A gust of wind blows her hair, slices through her clothes straight to her bones, and sends pellets of ice and misted snow into her face and open eyes. She holds her arms up to shield herself from the icy debris. The wind worms its way under the cuffs of her sleeves, into her finger holes in her gloves to settle in the cup of her palms. She clenches her fists against the wet cold and realizes that she forgot to put her mittens over her gloves. She curses, sputters and digs for her mittens.

"Stupid." She yanks the mittens from the top of her pack, fumbles with them for a moment. Her fingers are already clumsy with cold, the skin contracting and nail beds turning a hideous shade of blue. She shakes out the mittens and slips them over her gloves, hopes that she does it quickly enough. She's made a critical error in allowing the ice into her gloves. The whole point of mittens over gloves is to conserve body heat and keep her hands warmer; try to keep her fingers from succumbing to frostbite. It's a temporary sacrifice of dexterity weighed against the long term benefits. The warmer she can stay, the less likely it is that her body will starve her appendages of blood flow and kill them off.

She stares at her now covered hands, clenching and unclenching fists, wiggling and shaking fingers. She needs her hands. She is a warrior. Loss of her fingers means losing her ability to use her gun. Losing her hands means losing her sword.

Losing her hands means losing the only thing she's good at; the only thing she's good for.

She is an idiot.

"Too careless Lightning," she scolds, proud that she keeps the tremble from her voice. "Too distracted." She slipped into dark memories and made a mistake or she saw the bright sun and the clear skies and got sloppy. Either or, take your pick. The result is the same: she got cocky in the absence of one enemy, and left herself vulnerable to the more dangerous and lethal one. The cold.

She feels the ice melting against her palms and wonders if she should turn back into the cavern to try and dry out and warm up. She looks up, sees that the sun is on its ascent. She has a full day of sunlight now. She needs to walk, find a safe place and set up a camp before nightfall. Sunset will drop the temperature from dangerous to lethal. She looks around at the Steppe, realizes how exposed she is to the winged predators that hunt the plateau.

"This may have been a big mistake," she tells the air. When the next wind blows, forcing her to touch her chin to her chest and close her eyes, she's pretty sure that she needs to drop the 'may have been' from her assessment. She considers calling for reinforcements now, certain that Sazh will come and get her.

Soon. She needs to get to safety before she calls.

When the wind dies down she scans again, sees the cliffs on the southern border of the Steppe and decides that they are her best bet. They'll provide a natural shield against the wind and cut off an entire angle of approach. Of course, it'll also cut off a line of retreat, but it's a chance she's willing to take to reduce her exposure by half.

The cliffs turn out to be farther away than they look, or maybe it's just slogging through knee deep snow that makes it seem that way. Either way, the sun is directly overhead by the time she reaches the cliffs and each step she takes eats up entirety of her shadow on the snow. Her feet are starting to burn in her boots again, but her hands still feel functional, if cold.

It turns out she was right and the cliff face does shield her from the majority of the wind. Lightning is pleased that her judgment and assessment skills are still sound. The stupidity of her overall decision to slog across the world in the middle of deep winter at the height of a huge storm had her wondering for a moment.

She pulls out the communicator and tries raising Sazh. There's no answer and she swears aloud; loud enough to hear back in Oerba. She presses buttons on the communicator, wondering if she broke it in her travels, or if she's just in an iffy spot for signals. The thing beeps and burbles in her hand, but offers no connection.

/Yelling doesn't fix it. It's called interference./

She shoves the unexpected memory of Fang aside, irritated that the past won't stop haunting her today. _Doesn't matter. Keep moving._

Thus resolved, Lightning walks in the shadows of the cliff until the world starts blushing with imminent sunset. The sky is ablaze with shades of red and gold and they reflect off the snowpack to create one of the most devastatingly beautiful sunsets Lightning has ever seen. She stares into the distance and forgets all her problems and worries, her fears and loneliness and just breathes.

The air is cold, but she doesn't feel it. The wind blows ice up her nose, giving her an instant brain freeze. She rubs at the pain but finds it little more than a nuisance. She basks in a false peace that can only be found in beauty. She closes her eyes against the purples of approaching darkness, knows that it is stupid to waste time standing when she should be setting up a camp for herself. She can't seem to care though.

Stupid is becoming a habit it seems. She blames Snow for being a bad influence.

She has memories of nights out on the Archylte Steppe sitting watch with Snow. Gran Pulse was silent under a blanket of stars, Cocoon shining like a spotlight overhead, and she and Snow sat in silence, listening to the chirps of strange insects and smelling the perfume of alien wildflowers. Sometimes they would talk about important things, sometimes meaningless ones. Sometimes there was an undercurrent of pain and fear between them, sometimes it was serenity and hope. But no matter what, there was a shared sense of purpose and calm between them and a deep appreciation for the beauty inherent in the untamed wilds of Gran Pulse.

It is a sad thing that some of her happiest memories are of the worst time of her life. It is a betrayal of everything that matters to her, that she hordes these secret memories like a pirate does with ill-gained treasure.

She hears something on the wind that pulls her from her thoughts. Something more than the calls of animals, or the sound of storming. Something off enough to make her forget her shame and her memories and her secret longings. She cocks her head and listens, curses the wind when it picks up again and drowns out the noise. The warrior in her takes over and she's happy to see her. She moves forward before she forms the thought, waits until the wind dies and stops.

Listens...

_Gunfire._

She opens her eyes and frowns. She would recognize the sounds of gunplay anywhere, but she can't figure out what it would be doing out on the Archylte Steppe in the shadow of Mah'Habara. No one lives out here. There are only a few outposts. She supposes someone could be hunting, or repelling an Amphisbaena attack. She hopes no one is stupid enough to try small arms fire on an Adamantoise or one of its cousins.

A loud boom startles her from her thoughts.

That one was heavy artillery: high caliber ammo or a grenade. No one would use that to hunt, and hurling hand grenades or Molotov cocktails at Amphisbaena is pointless and idiotic. All that would do is piss the winged nightmare off and bring its wrath down on the attacker's head and she shudders to think of the stampede it might cause from an Adamantoise. She finds it hard to believe that anyone who settled on the Steppe would be stupid enough to antagonize the largest animals. Adamantoises are herbivores and don't attack unless provoked, and all civilians in the outposts know how the easiest way to avoid Amphisbaena attacks is to stay indoors when they're spotted. The large predators are, as Fang once called them, 'winged death.' But they are also primarily hunters out for their own survival. They don't tear down buildings for prey; they move on and find their meal elsewhere.

Another explosion rattles the world, this one louder and closer. Now that the sky has darkened, Lightning can see the flickering glow indicative of structural fire blazing away on the horizon. Lightning takes a step towards the blaze when a third then fourth explosion rattle everything, one after the next. The snow falls again, hard. She watches it pour and sift down for a second before realization sinks in.

The snow isn't falling...it's **collapsing!**

She tries to get out of the way. Lightning is fast, but she'll never be faster than gravity, and a pile of snow that's been clinging onto the ledge above her shakes loose and lands on her with the force of an anvil, and buries her beneath a mountain of packed snow and ice.

* * *

The first thing she realizes is that she can't breathe. She's freezing, and wet, but her body dismisses those things as unimportant in comparison to the need for oxygen. She tries to gasp but it's like breathing with her head under a blanket. An icy blanket. She thrashes, but finds that she's pinned immobile. She tries to open her eyes but they feel frozen shut.

Memory smacks her with the weight of a sledgehammer.

She's buried alive.

Panic floods through her, followed hard by an adrenaline chaser and she moves every muscle at once, tries to burrow her way upwards, outwards, backwards. Any direction will do as long as she can free herself.

_Panic is always an enemy._

Fighting her body's instincts is harder than it should be for her. Her training feels further out of reach than ever right now. She can't focus on anything but the need for freedom and the struggle for survival. She thrashes again and doesn't stop until everything hurts and the world is slipping away from her like she's falling into a dream.

_Stop it. You're going to panic yourself right into death._

Obeying to her inner voice is harder than it's ever been, but she does it.

_Okay. What do you know?_

She knows that she's trapped.

/Buried!/

She knows that she's alive. So, if she's alive, then she's breathing. If she's breathing, then there must be an air pocket. She tells herself that she can survive if she keeps her wits. She reminds herself that panic accelerates respiration, and will use up the air and create more carbon dioxide. She'll die faster unless she calms down.

It all sounds so reasonable. She just can't seem to get her raging heart to buy her mind's rationalizations.

She starts again, testing one limb after the next to see if she can get any give and free one. She starts with her right foot, tries to work it to get it under her, to gain leverage so she can push up and hopefully surface. She feels like she's stuck in cement instead of ice, feels the panic threaten to boil over again. She gives up on that leg for the moment in hopes of maintaining control and tries the other foot. This one moves somewhat, shifts some of the packed snow from around her. The small bit of give elates her, raises her hopes for escape. She keeps moving her foot until her pelvis has some leeway. Then she rocks that and manages to un-stick her torso. She finally starts working her arms in the newly created space. She works them up, wiggles fingers back and forth to shift snow aside.

The whole process takes forever. She's lightheaded by the time her head breaks the surface of the snowpack. She's so cold that she can't even feel it anymore. She would consider that a blessing if it weren't for her very lethal circumstances. Sleep beckons to her to succumb but she fights, knows she needs to get out of this pile of snow or it will be her grave. She pulls and pushes until she's sweating into her soaked, frozen clothing. Or maybe that's ice melting and saturating her. Either way, it's only going to make matters worse. She wriggles free and lands face first on the snow covered ground.

Free.

She's free now but dying by degrees in the full dark of a Gran Pulse night. She's not even shivering though she knows by all rights she should be jittering like some sort of drug addict in withdrawal. It's not good. Not shivering is a very bad sign. She can't remember why right now, but she knows it all the same. She can feel the ice on her eyelashes, weighing them down, making sleep seem like an even more appealing idea. She closes her eyes.

_Maybe just a little while..._

Explosions and raucous laughter pierce the encroaching fog in her mind. She hears gunfire, the sounds of engines. Something is close to her and getting closer. She may be dying but she isn't dead yet. She needs to find out what is going on. The warrior in her demands it! There are warning bells going off inside her that have nothing to do with her decline and everything to do with an approaching threat.

She peels her eyes open and sees the bright glow on the horizon. It looks like the entire world is on fire. She blinks at it, sees a shadow resolving itself in stark relief to the brightness. It's massive. She blinks again, tries to wipe the ice from her lashes and ends up making the situation worse. She curses at herself, her stupidity and her own failing body.

_There's no time for this Lightning. _She has this chance-this one chance-to understand what has happened. She has lived through enough cataclysmic moments to know one when approaches.

She stares at the growing shadow through frozen eyes until her brain can place it.

_A Havoc Skytank!_ Her eyes widen. She hasn't seen one of these since the fall of Cocoon. Where the hell did it come from? Who are these people and where did they procure PSICOM weaponry? She spots a few other vehicles following. She hears laughter blended with screams in some horrible symphony. The sounds trail after and around the caravan like a procession and veil follow a bride.

She doesn't know what has happened but she does know it's bad. She's seen enough violence to note its signature on a person. She can smell the smoke and death on the air. Its stink clings to these men. She needs to see what has happened, but moreover, she needs to see where these men are heading. Her warrior instincts shout about the urgency of the knowledge.

She climbs up onto numb hands and knees and tumbles into the snow again. She swears, spits out a mouthful of snow and tries again. She manages to balance the next time and ignore the pain wending its way through her body. She's in big trouble. She ignores the knowledge, dismissing it as obvious and unhelpful, checks her gear then concentrates on crawling forward. Her whole body feels like a frozen sack of potatoes. She moves like she's been shackled to a dead Adamantoise and is now trying to haul the carcass behind her. Breathing is as laborious a task as moving. She pants hard, finds the icy air as painful and numbing in her lungs as ever. She resists the urge to cough, afraid it might send her face first into the snow again. If that happens, she knows she won't ever find the strength to climb up.

Her vision is blurred but she keeps the blob of the moving caravan in her sights. Once they've passed her position, she climbs onto her numb feet, feels needles of agony mix into the encompassing numbness in her body. She pushes the pain aside, pushes thoughts aside and sets her mind toward her task. She can still hear the screams from that caravan, though no longer with her ears. They rattle around in her brain, call up images of Purge and apocalypse, of helpless civilians crushed beneath military boots and machines. Memories of the weak falling before the irresistible might of the strong.

She's seen and caused enough death to know other death-bringers at first sight. Like attracts like, after all.

She follows the caravan on dead legs. Intel and infiltration was never her specialty, but she is a superior soldier, and her time as a l'Cie taught her the finer points of the art of stealth. She follows them northwest for what feels like hours until she catches sight of their base. She ducks behind a snow drift and peers around it for a look.

They've set up a camp in a natural break in the cliff face somewhere north of the entrance to the Mah'Habara caverns. They have a perimeter fence with barbed wire surrounding several bunkers and shoddy buildings, with one sturdy building in the rear that most likely houses their heavy artillery. She spots three gun turrets throughout the camp. They are positioned well but not ideally.

Lightning memorizes the layout and breaks it down in her mind. It's a good set up but not fantastic. It's better than she'd expect most civilians to do, but nowhere near what a properly trained command unit would accomplish.

Amateurs, then. Possibly some grunts with delusions of grandeur.

Screams catch her attention and pull her from her mental calculations. Lightning watches as three men drag a chain gang of prisoners out of the large garage. One man laughs when one falls and delivers a hard kick to the downed prisoner's stomach. She hears the other prisoners' protests and notes with growing rage that all the prisoners are women.

_So that's it, eh?_ The fate of these prisoners flashes through her mind like a bad stop motion film. Everything inside her clenches. She grits her teeth, digs dead fingers into numb palms. She knows what these so called men are planning to do with their prisoners. She knows that the rest of these women's lives will be worse than any death she's ever contemplated.

_Unacceptable! _

She needs to do something. Her weapon is in her frozen hand before she thinks twice. She tenses, feels a wave of vertigo and fatigue knock her back onto her ass. She curses herself, curses the weather. Curses the snow, and then curses Snow just for good measure.

She can't do anything right now. She probably won't manage to take out any of the sadistic rapist bastards before she's mowed down by the gun turrets. She'll never make it over the barbed wire, and there's too much snow to worm under the fence. Going through is out of the question as she does not have the necessary tools.

If she actually wants to help these women (and kill these sorry excuses for humans) she's going to need help. She needs to mark her position and move her ass. She needs to get word to Sazh to get reinforcements.

She stands up and finds herself on her back staring at the stars.

Reinforcements and medical assistance. She flips over and drags herself through the snow. She can't afford to pass out near an enemy encampment. She can't let herself fall into enemy hands.

Can she? Pieces start clicking together in her head to form an idea...

She shakes her head. Maybe but not yet. Not in such a frozen, weakened condition. She's no good to anyone right now, least of all herself.

She crawls until the snow starts glowing blue with the approaching dawn. She moves until her joints won't bend anymore, until she can't feel her knees, fingers, wrists or nose anymore. She can't catch her breath.

She hears the roar of a motor and curses, crawls as fast as she can-which is admittedly not very fast. She can't believe they've caught her. Can't believe that a bunch of barely trained mongrels managed to detect her and follow her through the damn snow.

The vehicle stops moving and so does she. She's gone as far as she can. She's as good as dead anyway.

Her last thought as she faceplants into the snow is that the joke's on them.

* * *

TBC...

So, I'm taking a bit of time off from this one to finish Chapter 27 of Evolution. I NEED to work on that one. Then I'll be back to finish this up. Remember, feedback drives the muses and I write what they demand.


	7. Muttering Retreats

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy XIII, nor do I make any profit from writing these ridiculous stories. I promise to put everything back where I found it once I'm done, though the characters may be a TAD bit worse for wear. After all...I do like to hurt them.  
I haven't died, though it seems like I fell of the face of the earth for a while. I have been working on this story, but Evolution is still the priority. Life has been pretty terrible this month so I've been distracted. Chapter 29 of Evolution is in the works. I took about 3 weeks off all writing but I'm getting back to work now.  
Thanks for all the feedback. You guys rock. And thanks for your patience. I hope I haven't lost your interest. I'm not sure I was thrilled with this chapter, but it's a necessary evil.

* * *

"One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too."  
-Friedrich Nietzsche

-Muttering Retreats-

"Here!" A voice yells out. "I found her!"

The voice sounds distant-distant enough that she's half convinced that it's imaginary. She can barely feel the hands groping at her, maneuvering her, trying to muscle her out of the snow. She knows that if she's taken from this location, she will most likely be killed. She wants to fight but she can't open her eyes; she can't move at all. She resists the only way she can-by going limp and boneless.

Dead weight is harder to maneuver.

She hears a grunt, feels fingers bruise where they dig into freezing flesh and aching bone. The pain is indistinct-too much and too little at once. She is vaguely aware of being manhandled off the ground and out of the snow drift. She knows she should be concerned. Terrified even. She can barely muster apathy.

When unconsciousness asks her for a dance, she takes its hand and lets it lead her away, fully expecting it to be her last tango.

* * *

_She spins and twirls to an erratic rhythm. She's off-balance, much like she was just after blowing out her eardrum and developing extreme vertigo as a side effect. In fact, her whole body hurts, and the spinning is getting sickening and she just wants to stop. The room blurs by her and she's so very hot. She needs air, or water, or anything right now before she immolates or vomits and won't that just be the most attractive thing ever for the other occupants of the dance floor._

_And...why is she dancing anyway? She's never liked dancing._

_"Because I asked you to," says a velvet voice, and she shivers at the tingle of it across her skin and in her ears. _

_The spinning slows, stilled by a large hand on the small of her back, and another in her hand. She's pulled forward, and pressed against a hard body. She relaxes into the twirling, listens to the rapid heartbeat in the chest beneath her cheek. The hand in hers disappears for a moment before it's in her hair, cradling her head. She should be fighting, but she's too dizzy. She just needs her bearings, and if she can just stay here for a moment she'll feel better. She tries to focus on the steady thud-thud beneath her cheek and all she hears is a rattling, clanging, sound that makes her head throb_

_"_Hold her still!"

_and she is afraid and cold and shaking apart under the intensity of the feelings. _

"Hold onto her!"

_She's confused and she reaches out again for Snow but he's gone. He's gone, and she's alone and so, so cold._

"This'll keep you calm."

She feels a small jab into her arm, more painful than it ought to be. Then she feels nothing at all.

* * *

She's drowning. Or perhaps, she drowned already.

There's a weight on her chest like someone dropped a house on her. Every inhalation makes her lungs burn.

Everything burns.

There's pain. Enough that she knows she's still alive; so much that she wishes she were dead. Parts of her body that had long since stopped feeling are waking up to sound off their anger at her flagrant abuse. Face, fingers, toes, feet, calves, ears. Each body part feels as if she's taken a blowtorch to it.

She tries to scream out the pain but her voice is a ragged thing, hissing and gasping, whistling through her bleeding, raw throat.

Her body shakes and sends off a wave of agony from the dead soles of her feet to the frozen roots of her hair. A hard bounce sends her careening off a ledge. _Where the hell did that come from? _She falls a short distance, lands face down on something with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. She inhales. The air is warmer than she's felt in forever and her nose runs as if the contents of her sinuses have just been waiting to thaw in order to empty. She tastes blood and mucus, coughs, inhales again and smells rubber and antifreeze. The smells confound her. She tries to force her eyes open but they're too heavy. She tries to say something, but her tongue is swelled, or her lips are glued.

Or she's gagged.

She struggles, feels her heart kick up a fuss in her chest when she can't move. Someone pins her and she bucks and grits her teeth. Her jaw feels as if it might break. Her arms ache. There's a knot in her back the size of a fist that continues to punch her in the spine. She feels bruised and beaten, but she fights as hard as she can against her body. Against her restraints.

"Stop struggling!"

The command makes her fight harder. She feels hands on her body and she recoils and feels something whack her in the head hard enough to stun her. Her ears ring, the world spins in accelerating circles.

One.

Two.

She's out before she can count out the third.

* * *

_The large crack runs from floor to ceiling with smaller fractures splintering off across the whole wall. It resembles a spider web across the wall, and feels just as deadly._

_Something lurks beneath it. _

_She's always known that this house was a death trap. She never wanted to move into it. Something about it reminds her of the past, and it isn't the nearby beach. It's the cheerful appearance versus the depressing reality. An empty house that doubles as a tomb; a pseudo-home that feels like a prison._

_It reminds her of her whole life. _

_It reminds her of Barthandelus-all innocent appearances, smarmy smiles and insidious intent._

_She feels said sinister intent like an ill wind. She feels it in her gut, in her bones, behind her eyes. She feels it in prickled skin and a shiver that stalls at the base of her spine. It hovers over and around her, trapped behind the walls of the house; it possesses the structure, animates the inanimate. The enemy is around her, and it's seeking a way to reach her. _

_The crack in the wall spreads as she watches it. She stares transfixed, watches fingers wiggle out, turn into insects crawling over the walls. She should run, she knows. She should be horrified that her house is possessed and falling apart; that there is some creature trying to wiggle through cracks in the facade so it can reach her. _

_It will reach her; that should worry her. _

_It doesn't. She doesn't care. She hates this house, and this life, but somehow, she can't seem to leave it. Every time she tries to go, she comes back to it. _

_Like she's caught in an orbit. Or a web._

_Like she's chained to it._

_Chained to her. Chained to him..._

_Perhaps her dark stalker can offer an out._

_She stretches out on the miserable, uncomfortable couch and stares at the crack in the wall. It widens as she watches. She waits, eager to face the monster. Eager to confront the creature that's hiding inside. _

_She longs to destroy it as it seeks to destroy her. She knows now that it is the cause of her problems, and that if she can just exorcise it..._

_...All her problems will go away._

_Her breath catches. _

_Or does she have it backwards? Perhaps confrontation will lead **it** to exorcise **her**. She can feel its need like fingers around her throat; like breath ghosting over her lips. She knows that if she is here when it finally breaks through, she will disappear. She can feel the urgency, but it isn't enough to conquer the exhaustion or apathy. It isn't enough to let her break orbit._

_She feels like a stranger in this place, like a ghost haunting her own life._

_The crack gets bigger still and she watches as a piece of plaster falls. The walls peel back and away. She needs to get up and leave before everything crumbles around her. Her body feels leaden and won't respond to her will anymore. The couch sucks. Something is digging into her, constricting her. The couch is too small and claustrophobic. The material chafes where it rubs her skin. She wants to move, she really does but she's so tired that even thinking of getting up exhausts her. In fact, she thinks she'll sleep some..._

_'You need to get up Light.'_

_Snow._

_She smiles. _

_It should be strange that he's here, but it isn't. It feels right, like she's found a missing piece to the puzzle. She misses him. Misses him, misses the sound of his voice and the smell that is his. She misses the sparkle in his eyes as he teases her, the small crinkles that bracket his eyes as he smiles. She misses the quirk of his lip, and his steady presence at her back. _

_She will never admit to any of this, but it doesn't mean she doesn't feel it._

_That he's here should bother her, but it doesn't. She feels lighter with him there. In this moment, she feels happy without the usual shame and anger that is balled and bundled up in all thoughts of Snow. She turns toward his voice but doesn't see him. Still, she knows he's there with her._

_Always with her..._

_'Don't want to. m'tired Snow' Tired of fighting, tired of running. Tired of this life that doesn't fit. Tired and sore, and ready to rest._

_Tired of looking but not touching, of wanting and not having; tired of pretending. Tired of being without him, though she'll never admit that aloud. Admitting it to herself is pretty much impossible, after all._

_'I know,' and she feels the ghost of his fingers on her hip, on the back of her neck, tracing the scar on her back where he refused to stitch her. 'I know you're tired and I'd let you rest" His breath puffs against her neck and she shivers. "I really would. But you have to go. Something is coming.'_

_There is laughter in the cold; danger in the darkness._

_'No...'_

_'And the house is on fire, Lightning. You need to get out of the house.'_

_She opens her eyes though she doesn't remember closing them and fixates on the unfamiliar crack in the wall. She sits up and watches as the crack melts, then explodes into flames. She jumps up but there's flames everywhere now and she feels the heat on her skin. She moves and sees that her feet are burning. She needs to get out, but she needs to get HIM out more. She can't find him. She panics before realizing that he was a dream. Or a nightmare. He's not here and never was. Her mind is playing tricks on her, tormenting her. She runs for the door down a corridor she can't remember, and watches the flames lick at her hips, catch on her clothes. She feels it but it doesn't hurt enough, so she stops moving and watches herself burn and she wonders why she was so afraid._

_She catches a glimpse of her stalker and the form is human and smirking; the fire roars and it sounds like cruel laughter. She hears screams and the walls are crumbling. She the smart edge of a blade rend, watches blood cascade over her hands and wonders why she's not dead... _

_Until she realizes that the only thing in the house-and in this life-that can hurt her, is her-_

* * *

She's not sure she's awake. She can still feel Snow's breath on her cheek, still hear his voice. She can still feel the burning from her feet to her face and her dream recedes.

She remembers the flames, still feels the burning and panics...

She knows she's not in that house. She remembers leaving the house, leaving the life that was killing her by inches and marching in a storm that was just killing her.

Perhaps Gran Pulse finally succeeded where the Cocoon fal'Cie failed.

Every part of her body burns and throbs in time with her erratic heartbeat. She's sure she feels her skin splitting. Her muscles pull and cramp like they're peeling back from her skeleton. She smells fire and smoke. She smells death.

She hears pops and crackling and she groans, hisses.

Fat snaps like fireworks when it burns...

She's a prisoner. She broke her captor's nose and her punishment is to be burnt alive.

She thinks that might be a bit of an overreaction.

"Help," she croaks. Her lips are sticking to her teeth and her throat feels like she's been gargling with ground glass.

"Easy there, Soldier." The rumbling voice is so welcome and impossible that she figures she must be still be languishing in fever dreams. It makes no sense. She opens her mouth to match the name to the voice but she can't. The answer is there, but remains teasingly beyond her reach. She sees a kind smile, warm, dark eyes and a flash of bright yellow fluttering around. The name is there, dancing on the tip of her tongue, loitering in her peripheral vision.

"Help." It's all she can think to say.

"We gotcha now. It's alright. You're going to be alright."

_How?_ she wants to ask, but can't think past the pain.

She feels a hand on her forehead. She tries to open her eyes to figure out if she's hallucinating but her eyes are so heavy and glued shut. She moves, but her arms are pinned immobile.

_Not good!_

She panics, thrashes and every inch of skin feels like it's peeling off of her. She screams, and it's a rough, raw thing.

"Hey now Soldier!" Hands cup her face. "Sorry about this but you'll hurt yourself."

She opens her mouth to answer when something warm and sticky flows through her and she exhales and slips away...

"It'll be over soon."

* * *

_'It'll be over soon...' and she doesn't know what that means. She looks around to figure it out but she's outside on the beach in Bodhum. She can smell the salt of the sea, but it's funny. Off._

_Everything feels wrong. _

_The sand chafes and Phoenix is burning a little too hot today for her taste. She knows -knows-knows that she's getting roasted by the radiant and reflected rays, and she's not looking forward to the coming days of too hot skin against itchy sheets, ice cold showers against reddened skin, pervasive soreness, or the ugly peeling._

_'You couldn't be ugly if you tried.' She feels the breath gush into her burning ear, feels the moisture tickle her oversensitive skin. She smiles and stretches, slow and satisfied._

_'You are a liar,' she tells him and she shivers at the sensation of him chuckling against her. She opens her eyes but Phoenix is too bright and she can't see more than a silhouette anyway and she's afraid to look at him because then he'll be real. Or he won't be real. She wants to fold him into her arms, pull him to her, sigh into his neck, curl fingers into his hair, and taste the breath he exhales. She wants to memorize the texture of the skin at the small of his back, and drag the soles of her feet over the swell of his calves. She wants..._

_She feels a sudden sadness that nearly devours her because she can never hold him or know any of those things. She can never even think about it because entertaining the notion makes her the worst sort of traitor. _

_She needs to get away from here. There are no words for how wrong this is, nor how right it feels. She needs to run..._

_'Don't be sad,' he whispers and she wonders when he became a mind reader. _

_'I'm not,' he says in answer to her unspoken question, proving himself a liar once again. He takes her hand in his. 'I just know you. You're part of me.'_

_It's a ridiculous and traitorous declaration. She should break his face._

_'I know,' she says because she feels the same. _

_It's not right, but it's still the truth. _

_She doesn't know how it happened; how she went from loathing everything about him to finding him charming and wonderful and too impossible to live with, and more impossible to live without, but there it is all the same. It crept up on her like a mugger, and it spread through her body like a cancer before she realized it happened; and now it's too late. _

_It started with grudging respect that morphed to charmed affection and before she knew what happened, she couldn't imagine a life where he didn't exist in some form. And she wants him to be happy; she always thought that was where it ended until she realized that her own happiness was tied to his with some sort of invisible chain, and rather than acting as a buoy, it more closely resembles a noose strangling the life from her. _

_She can't hold him, and so she can't be near him. _

_She can't do this anymore. Letting him flirt with her on the beach where he proposed to Serah is worse than anything she's ever done, and Lightning has done some terrible things. She tries to pull her fingers from his and her hand lights up with a familiar agony _

"Hold still now"

_before he releases it. She feels odd. The world wobbles and she feels ill. She looks around for him, feels his breath against her throat._

_'We can't...'_

_'You should get inside, Light.' She feels his fingers ghost against her skin and it hurts. The pain is a comfort, because she shouldn't take pleasure in his touch. Ever. 'There's a storm coming' he whispers against her lips. She licks her own in anticipation, lifts her head to close the distance between her mouth and his-_

_-and she's freezing and soaked, her hand throbs and her shoulder is a knot of pain. She is on Pulse, on the Archylte Steppe. She smells smoke and hears screams and can see in her mind's eye the caravan of death spreading like a disease across all of Gran Pulse. She needs to move, to save herself, to save the others. Part of her feels like she's lost something on this Steppe...someone that was with her-who should be with her still. Something terrible is happening and she isn't moving. She is withering and dying. She's a frozen observer in this new world and part of her wonders if perhaps she never woke from crystal stasis after all. _

_The thought comforts her._

_Perhaps this whole Pulse nightmare is just some crystal dream. That would mean that she is not a traitor; that Snow is still in love with Serah and that she never fell in love with him at all. It would mean that she is still with Fang and Vanille. The thought makes her happy._

"You need to wake up now..."

_The voice is familiar and surprising. She tries to follow it, to latch onto it and let it haul her out of this tar pit in her mind. She tries to open her eyes again_ (though she's sure she's looking at the white snow of the Archylte Steppe) and realizes that she's blindfolded. She grunts, licks dry, foul lips with a pasty tongue and says, "Wha-"

"Your eyes are bandaged, Light. Don't worry. You'll be okay. Just take your time." She shakes her head. She doesn't understand. Why are her eyes bandaged? Where is she? Who's speaking?

"Snow?" she asks, though the name doesn't feel right. The voice doesn't match and the scent is off. He was just here though. Wasn't he? She was talking to him on the beach...

No beach. There are no beaches here but the one she left behind her.

Nothing makes sense and she feels everything in her tense up in frustration.

"Yeah, Light," but the voice is all wrong and she's sure that she's lost her mind. The absence of sight is disorienting, and her whole mind feels muddled and out of step. She needs to get her bearings or sink back into unconsciousness. Either one will suffice. "We found you laying in the snow. You got some serious frostbite, but you're going to be okay."

Not Snow-she knew that. She knows that she should be relieved. She remembers leaving to get away from Snow and the life that trapped her. Having him here would be...bad.

She wishes that she felt relieved instead of broken.

Pain is making her weak. Weakness makes her sick.

She pushes away thoughts of Snow and focuses instead on the familiar fingers picking at what is apparently bandaging around her head.

"You had us really worried. I...I was afraid. I thought...when we saw you there, I thought we were too late."

It's Hope. The voice and fingers belong to Hope. She feels the cobwebs clearing, feels lucidity returning, but is still confused. There's no way Hope can be here either. Not Snow. Not Hope. She must be dreaming still and wishes there was some way to tell. She works her mouth to get moisture back into it and feels something wet and cool dab at her dry lips.

"I'd give you an ice chip but you were pretty frozen when we found you."

"Hope?" she whispers before she can stop herself. The whole thing is nonsensical.

"Yeah, Light. It's me." She feels his small hand brush hair back from her forehead. His fingers feel cool against her brow and she sighs. "You're going to be okay now."

It doesn't make any sense. She's sure it doesn't.

"How?" she rasps, as she flips through the pages of her mind in an effort to figure out what the hell is going on. Nothing about this makes any sense.

"Sazh and I found you."

That makes even less sense. What would Sazh be doing here? She wanted to call him. Did she call him? She can't remember speaking with him.

She remembers being in her home, in her bed. She remembers Snow showing up. It was dark and cold and he was warm and his mouth was scalding. She remembers the treacherous feel of his breath on her face, his heart hammering against her palm, and his hands and arms cradling her body. She remembers leaving, and taking his bandana with her. She remembers the Tower; nearly plummeting to her death; speaking with him; telling him not to call her anymore. She remembers the snow-miles and miles of snow laid out like a quiet carpet over the whole world; covering Pulse like a shroud.

She remembers freezing and crawling.

She remembers flashes of Snow that she realizes must have been dreams: the heat of his breath, the solidity of his body, the curl of his tongue. Snow in her home and on the beach; holding her. Whispering secrets to her. Things that should be conjurations but aren't because of one traitorous moment; things that she will forget starting. Right. NOW.

She exhales.

She remembers the screams mixed with laughter.

She remembers the bloodlust surge up within her, and the memory materializes into reality so fast that she's seething, blood boiling.

There are murderers about and she let them get away. The thought makes her stomach churn; the memory makes her cheeks burn.

They are out there, reeking of death, painted in blood. They are the dregs of humanity and their lives were forfeit the moment she spied them. They are dead men walking-they just don't know it yet.

She needs to get up. She is a soldier; she swore to protect and she's failed utterly in that task. She tries moving but finds she can't. She feels hog-tied, blindfolded and staked out for scavengers; she gnashes her teeth against a spike of claustrophobia that kicks her heart into overdrive.

"Easy, Light." She feels the bindings loosening and she works to control her breathing. "Sazh bundled you up good to keep in the body heat and warm you faster. You were practically blue when we found you." Hope's voice shakes and Lightning does her best to get her spiraling emotions under control and not make things worse.

She hates it when Hope is scared. Or sad. She hates being the cause of more worry in his life. He has enough to deal with without heaping her self-made drama onto the pile.

"Swaddled," Sazh's voice comes from farther away. She hears footsteps approaching, feels his fingers worming between blankets and her skin. "It's what I used to have to do with Dajh when he was a baby to keep him warm."

He chuckles in a wonderfully soothing way. She relaxes, feels sleep tugging at her again.

"Not supposed to warm you up too fast," Sazh says as he slowly pulls at the blankets. "Something about cold blood rushing back from your limbs to your heart and killing you; or some such nonsense." She feels a blast of cold air on her feet and wiggles her toes, pleased to note that she can still feel them all. Part of her feared that she would wake to find pieces of her hacked off. "Though personally I think that particular brand of nonsense only applies to the rest of us mere mortals. You, my dear Soldier Girl, have more lives than a damn cat."

Lightning smiles at Sazh's running commentary, shifts and aches as the pressure around her body lessens. When Sazh finally pulls the last of her mummy tight blankets loose, Lightning shivers at the touch of cold air against her overheated skin. Sazh lifts her hand and she fights the urge to recoil. Every inch of her feels like it's covered in new skin. Too sensitive. Everything is just too much. She feels stripped of her armor and laid bare; she feels each nerve ending wake up at once to tingle, itch, burn then howl. She bites her lip to stifle the moan.

"Easy there, Soldier."

Easy? It's a ridiculous order. There's nothing easy about any of this and Sazh expecting **her** (of all people) to take it easy is absurd. Her entire body is a raw wound, and without the benefit of sight to mitigate it, her sense of touch is in total overdrive.

It's miserable. She's miserable.

Speaking of her sight: "Wanna tell me what's wrong with my eyes?" She is proud that she keeps the fear out of her voice.

Mostly.

"Swelling," Sazh answers unhelpfully. "Most likely from the extreme cold. To be honest, you look like you got punched in the face repeatedly by the Hero."

She flinches at the mention of Snow. She tries to cover for it by saying, "Yeah, well that never happened."

Although, she does sort of feel like it right now.

Sazh chuckles at her. "Yeah, Soldier. I know that." She feels blunt fingernails in her hair at the back, then the bandage around her head loosens and unwinds. "So do I, by the way. We're a matched set. You busted my nose, you know."

Now that he mentions it, she does have a vague recollection of heat butting someone. Sazh keeps his tone conversational. He's not angry but she feels guilty. Still, he should have known better than to try stripping her without her consent.

"Sorry."

"Nah," he says as he continues to unwrap bandages. "S'alright. I should've expected it from you. You never did do things the easy way." When the last of the bandaging is off, Lightning reaches up and pulls the thick pads off her eyes. "Hold up a second, Soldier. Kill the lights, Hope."

She hears movement and then hears the unmistakable sound of breath whistling against the glass of some type of hurricane lantern. "Alright then."

Opening her eyes hurts. The lids are so heavy they feel as if she's lifting barbells with her eyelashes. She blinks and blinks, feels the tears pour out of her eyes and race down her cheeks; the salt in her tears stings the skin of her face.

Her eyes feel as if she poured the entire contents of a beach into them, and her face feels as if she washed it with a cheese grater.

"Tilt your head back now." She obeys the command, feels Sazh's cool, sure fingers spreading her swollen eyelids, gets her first glimpse of him in the low light before the world disappears into a drop of liquid spreading across her cornea. She flinches away from the drops and blinks them from her eyes furiously. Sazh harrumphs at her and grumbles something about soldiers making lousy patients.

"Damn right we are," she agrees. She keeps blinking until her eyes focus. Her whole face feels bruised and tender, but she can see and she can move.

She feels more alive than she's felt in a year. How screwed up is that?

* * *

An hour later has her dressed in fresh clothes and checking her weapon. Her eyes are burning like she salted them just before staring into the sun, but she can see again. Most of her skin is red and raw, chafed and enflamed, but it is unbroken and healing. Her right hand is sporting a brand new bandage and Lightning traces the line of the tape around her pinky and ring finger, smoothes the tape where it spans the back of her hand-

-shivers at the memory of the feel of Snow's dry, chapped lips against the skin there, the heat of his breath, the humidity of his sigh, the smallest touch of tongue to broken bone-

and she shakes her head and swears. She is not going there, and she is not upset that his bandaging is long gone.

She. Just. Isn't.

...Damn it.

She's not thinking about any of this anymore. Ever!

Instead she traces the break in her bone and finds that it is nowhere near as tender as it should be. The bruising is yellowing instead of darkening. The tingling is nearly gone. She's confused but pleasantly surprised to find that she didn't manage to damage her hand as badly as she thought.

"You did a real number on that hand, Soldier." Sazh startles her from her perusal of the break. She doesn't understand. Her hand feels almost normal. Sazh raises a brow at her. "It's a good thing that I still have some left over goodies from our l'Cie days."

She doesn't get it. "Huh?"

"Elixir," Sazh says, and withdraws a familiar bottle from his pocket, measures out some into a cup and hands it to her. "I've been saving it for a rainy day." She stares at the amber liquid in the glass, knows exactly how precious it is in this dangerous, undeveloped world and feels equal parts honored and shamed that Sazh was forced to waste it on her. "And let me tell you, yesterday it was pouring when we found you."

Lightning looks at him and smiles before gulping the shot of Elixir. It's thick and warm like heated honey, but far too bitter. She grimaces at the taste before the potent medicine numbs her pain from her mouth to her gullet, then spreads outwards towards her fingers and toes.

Elixir is awesome, even if it's awful.

"Metaphorically speaking, I mean," Sazh finishes and Lightning smiles at him.

"Thank you." The words are pale. Sazh and Hope risked themselves to come after her, saved her life, then used their potions to heal her up.

"Nah! Don't thank me." Sazh rubs the back of his neck and shuffles. Between his dark complexion and the low light, she can't tell if he's actually blushing, but she thinks she knows him well enough by now to decide that he is. She finds a warmth filling a hole in her chest that she's never recognized before and realizes that she's missed Sazh this past year. She's missed his grumping, his smart-ass comments, his quick wit and his kind, caring heart. She leans forward and places a kiss on his cheek, feels the heat coming off him and knows that her assumption was correct. Sazh leans away from her and stammers out, "Hey now! No need to give an old man a heart attack."

"You're not that old, Sazh," she says, and knows that if Fang were here, she'd be winking at Sazh and making suggestions just to make the poor man stammer.

Sometimes she misses Fang like an amputated limb.

"I'm old enough, Miss Soldier and don't you forget it!" Lightning laughs at Sazh and sits down to pull a pair of socks onto her bandaged feet. The elixir treatments seem to have healed up the worst of the damage on her feet, but she can still feel spots that hurt surrounding spots with no feeling. There's a good chance the dead zones on her feet will stay that way. Lightning sighs-_nothing to be done about it now_-before tugging her fur boots on and lacing them up tightly over her leggings.

"You know, you never did say how you managed to find me." Lightning stands up and shifts inside her boots until they feel just right. She scowls at them and contemplates them until she realizes that Sazh didn't answer her question.

That's suspicious. Now she's really curious.

"Sazh?"

"Uh...well." Lightning starts feeling uncomfortable. "you know those communicators that I built for you all?"

"Yes?" It comes out as a question mostly because she's waiting for the punch line.

"Well," he drags it out into about four syllables as he says it, and gets all shifty again. "I may have added a locator beacon into each of them. Just in case."

Lightning raises her eyebrows as she contemplates Sazh's latest sneaky sneakiness. Ordinarily, the idea of being tagged like some sort of animal in a scientific study would piss her off, and she figures from Sazh's overall discomfort, he knows that. However, his little sneaky subterfuge just saved her ass in a very literal manner, and Lightning's never been one to complain about things just for the point of the issue...

Alright, so that's not really true at all. But she's not going to complain about **this **one thing just for the principle of the matter. No point. It came in handy. Sazh is brilliant. End of story.

Doesn't mean she won't ask for a way to deactivate it. Or at least an on-off switch. She's not willing to be tagged and tracked again if she's trying to disappear.

"Good idea, Sazh." Sazh lets out a full body exhalation, like he's really been worried about her exploding on him and trying to kill him all this time.

No faith. It almost makes her sad.

Lightning scans the room for her gear, praying it survived. She needs to move. She's already been idle too long and she's terrified she's going to be too late to do anything to help those prisoners. "Where's my gear?"

"Hey now, Soldier. Where do you think you're going now?"

Sometimes she forgets how much she doesn't like explaining herself.

"Where's my weapon? I have to go." She storms out of the bedroom and her body kicks up a fuss at the whirlwind movements. She is in no shape to move.

She doesn't care.

She ignores the pain and nausea, makes it into what looks like a gutted dining area before she's bowled over by the stench of exploded gunpowder and death. "Wha-?"

"Would you hold up and tell me what's going through that fool head of yours?" Sazh yells.

"Where are we?" Lightning looks around at the half destroyed building. There are bullet holes scarring the walls, scorch marks from larger ordnances. Sazh looks disgusted, which is an interesting counterpoint to her horror.

"Another damn destroyed outpost." Sazh walks over to the debris strewn table and swipes a careful hand through it. "Another damn waste." He shakes his head. "Bastards."

None of that makes any sense.

"What's going on?" Lightning waits to the count of ten. "What do you mean 'another,' Sazh? I don't know anything about any of this. Why does none of this seem like a surprise to you?" Sazh rubs his forehead, sits down and puts his head into his hands as if it is just too heavy to hold up any longer. Like the weight of the memories is unbearable. Lightning's fingers itch for her weapon. She's afraid that she knows exactly what he's about to say. She can already feel the anger percolating, and Sazh hasn't spoken yet.

"This isn't the first time I've found an outpost that's been decimated like this," Sazh says. Sazh rubs his hair once and Lightning expects to see his chocobo come flying out of it before realizing that baby chocobo isn't a baby anymore. She's probably as big as Hope by now.

A year. A whole year has gone by and she feels as if she sleepwalked through the whole thing.

"...These were good people. Hard working people!" Sazh snaps and Lightning has no idea how much of his diatribe she's missed but feels terrible for disappearing into her own thoughts while Sazh has been talking about things that clearly upset him.

"How many?" Lightning asks. "How long has this been going on, Sazh?"

"Six months. Maybe seven." She feels her face heat, her throat close, and her muscles tense. She's so angry she could spit. She feels like she might fly apart from the storm brewing inside her. She exhales a sharp breath through her nose, hoping to gain some calm. Time just seems to be working in the opposite manner, twisting her even tighter, ramping her anger up higher.

She needs to calm down-

"Why didn't you call me?" She tries not to make it sound like the accusation that it is.

She fails.

"Excuse me, Soldier?" Sazh matches her anger in a way he's never done before. She should recognize the danger here but she's too amped up to do anything but grit her teeth. "I believe I did call you several times." Lightning feels her fists clench at the accusation.

She knows it's true. That only makes her angrier. There's a buzz behind her stinging eyes.

"You should have told me!" Lightning shouts, knowing she's wrong. Knowing she's out of line. She wasn't willing to listen. She disappeared into her head and ignored everything. This is not Sazh's fault but she can't seem to care right now in the face of her own failure. Someone needs to be blamed, and she'll settle for Sazh.

"Why? What good would that have done?" It's like a slap in the face and Lightning feels the flush of rage and shame spread over her face, down her neck to cover her whole body. She wants to tear Sazh's head off for making this her fault.

_It is her fault._ She knows it's her fault.

"I asked you to come. I told you we needed your help. You just decided to curl into a ball and disappear! Go live on some beach somewhere and leave the us to deal with all this mess on our own."

"That's not..." _even close._ But not really wrong either.

"Don't you deny it! You didn't want to look at Cocoon." Sazh yells and she's not sure if she's angry, affronted, or just outright shocked that Sazh would speak to her in this manner. "You couldn't stand to look at Vanille or Fang so you just ran away."

Angry. Yep. Anger wins by a country mile...

"Shut up!"

"Poor little Soldier girl. Like you're the only one who lost something," Sazh snipes.

"What the HELL!" Hope yells from the doorway. "Are you both crazy? You really think blaming each other is going to make you feel better? Why not just pull your weapons and get it over with!" Lightning sees her shock mirrored on Sazh's face. Hope is livid. And Hope is right. "You want to do something useful, why don't you grab a shovel and help me bury the bodies that were left outside to rot!"

Hope turns around, storms out of the room and slams the door behind him. The force of the slam rattles the frame and shakes the door loose. It falls with a dry crack that sends a blast of cold air into the room.

Lightning feels her anger deflate at the mention of bodies. This is a home she's standing in. The people who lived here are dead. They were murdered for their food, or their supplies, or just for sport. These people were murdered and she's standing in their home blaming her friend for letting it happen.

She is a horrible person.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"No, Soldier. Don't apologize to me. I don't even know what the hell I was yelling about."

"I do. This... All of this." Lightning looks around at the destruction, looks outside at the still smoldering ruins. "There's only so much senseless death a person can stand looking at before they finally crack."

They need someone to blame; they need an enemy to fight.

Sazh stands next to her and looks outside. "I don't know what's going on anymore. I thought we'd seen the worst last year."

"Yeah. Me too."

"I should have told you what was going on." She shakes her head. "I wanted to believe that we could handle it ourselves. And I felt bad about ruining your chances at building a new life."

Lightning feels the urges to laugh and cry vie for top position. If Sazh only knew...

"And then when we found you and I thought you were going to die too, on top of everything." Sazh shakes his head. "We've lost enough. We can't lose you too."

Lightning looks at Sazh, sees the bruises under his eyes from his busted nose and smiles at him. "Well, you saved my ass."

"It was the kid, you know." Sazh nods towards Hope outside pacing in the snow. "He's the one that insisted we come looking for you."

She's not surprised. Not really. Hope followed her when she was hurtling full speed ahead on a suicide mission and he was just a scared, green kid looking for an outlet for his anger. He followed her through the Vile Peaks, through The Gapra Whitewoods and into Palumpolum. He'd have followed her straight into the heart of the Sanctum and died beside her. That he would come after her in a blizzard is not...

Wait. How the hell did he know?

Did she say more than she intended in her message? It's not impossible; she was half dead at that point-frozen, hypothermic, frostbitten, exhausted and bruised from her shoulder to her hip. To say she was delirious would be an understatement.

She walks to the door and lifts it into the frame again, spies Hope through a crack in the door hunched over and vomiting into the snow outside. She drops the door and walks outside, determined to get to him. He deserves better from her.

Things are a mess and she needs to fix them. Now.

Catching sight of the bodies derails her thoughts.

There are seven bodies lined up, each one embedded in a pool of frozen blood, faces blue, captured forever in the final throes of agony, blind, milky, iced over eyes staring at the unforgiving sky. She wants to close their eyes but knows it's impossible.

The bastards gut shot them. Dragging people from their homes in the dead of night and murdering them wasn't evil or sadistic enough for these maniacs. No; they decided to usher these people into the afterlife in the most painful, brutal, and excruciatingly protracted manner imaginable. These people were still alive when she tracked that caravan of death through the snow to their murderers' compound. These people were probably still alive when Sazh and Hope pulled her out of her own icy grave. The snow and freezing temperatures might have even slowed the bleeding as hypothermia set in. Lightning realizes that if weren't for hypothermia and exposure killing them first, these people might very well have still been howling when Sazh and Hope pulled her half frozen body into the one remaining structure.

She swallows down her own bile and hopes it doesn't come frothing out of her mouth. She vows that she will put these rabid animals out of everyone's misery.

Hope's retching draws her from her own horror, and she kneels beside him in the snow and places a hand on his back.

"I'm sorry, Hope." Hope's body shudders and she slides a hand under his arms to lift him up and into her arms. He slobbers a sob onto her neck and she repeats, "I'm sorry."

He shouldn't be here staring into eyes of dead men, trying to figure out how to bury bodies in the frozen ground. He should be home with his father. He shouldn't have to see anymore of this sort of horror. None of them should have to deal with this anymore. They've all seen enough horror and death to last ten lifetimes and it's left its mark on all of them. She hoped that Hope as the youngest might be able to heal from the scars and have some semblance of a normal life again.

She didn't realize that she was an idealistic moron. She thought that was Snow's domain. Apparently the Hero rubbed off on her.

...And she's just never going to think about that again. Ever.

Hope shakes against her, shudders, pulls himself together and away. She feels proud and sad at once. Hope is such an old child now. He's seen things men five times his age shouldn't see and he still tries to put on a brave face for the world. She wants to weep. Instead she smiles as he pulls away from her and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. "Sorry..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Hope."

"I should be able to handle this..." he gestures at the dead, blue bodies, looks at them and goes a whiter shade of pale. She shakes her head at him, and turns his face away from the dead bodies.

"No one should have to handle this Hope. These men..."

Men. Only men. No women or children...

"I have to save them," she whispers and stands up. She forgets about Hope and Sazh, looks around at the pure white, unmarked landscape. She's wasting time here. These men are dead. Their wives and children...they might still be alive.

This is what she lives for; it's what she was born to do. She's a weapon forged by necessity and honed by a thirst for vengeance. She's deadly and so very ready to unleash a year's /lifetime's/ worth of pent up anger and frustration on some deserving targets.

She's always believed a target's a target, and perhaps that's true. But some targets are better than others.

"I have to go."

"What?" Hope asks, confused and maybe even a bit scared.

"You can't save them, Soldier. They're long gone." Sazh is solemn. Horrified.

Disgusted.

She can relate.

"No. I know that." These people are long past her help. "The women. Sazh, I know where they are."

Sazh's whole face changes in an alarming way. "What are you talking about?"

"I was out on the Steppe and I heard the attack. I didn't know what was happening, but I knew it was bad." Sazh has a strange light in his eyes. If Lightning didn't know better, she'd call it blood lust. She considers his posture, his clenched fists...

Perhaps she doesn't know better after all. Sazh looks positively murderous; he's angrier than she can remember ever seeing him and that includes during their suicide run to the Pulse Vestige and the aftermath battles which nearly cost him his son. It worries and impresses her; but if Sazh is out for blood, she certainly can't blame him.

"I heard the explosions, and I saw the fire on the horizon. I didn't realize the extent of what I was seeing, but I know bad things when they're happening." They all do. Survival instincts can't be forgotten. "So I followed them." She stares at the bodies, faces a hideous shade of blue, eyes staring skyward.

"You..." Sazh starts but she cuts him off.

"Through the snow and the dark. I followed them." She nods to herself as she says, "I know where their base camp is."

"What?" Sazh asks, but it isn't really a question. It sounds...hopeful. "Where?"

"We don't have time for explanations." Lightning charges past him. There's an insane plan half-forming in her mind. The barbarism evident in the executions of these people raises the urgency level. Talking is wasting time that the prisoners don't have. Women that she abandoned to unimaginable horrors. "I left those prisoners there,"_ those crying, screaming women,_ "and I'm going to get them out."

* * *

TBC...

I know that there are unanswered questions here. This was really more like the first half of one chapter but I'm not willing to start writing 40 page chapters for this story. The next chapter will have some more action...I swears it. (I know it because I've already started it.)

As for the dreams-they are strange, but dreams usually are. I figure Lightning is a bit fatalistic and she's got Snow plus guilt on the brain in this story. And I've always found that my pain (and I have plenty of it) seems to bleed into my dreams and I'll HURT in my dream rather than just waking up. I guess it's a defense mechanism, and a function of exhaustion. Plus-medications make dreams even weirder.

Let me know what you think.


	8. Dying With a Dying Fall

A/N: Thanks to my readers, especially those who've taken the time to review. This is half of the original chapter. Once again, it was running too long.

* * *

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."  
-Edmund Burke

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it."  
-Helen Keller

-Dying With a Dying Fall-

"So what's the plan, Soldier?" Sazh asks as he follows her into the broken house. She spies her pack, swipes it and begins picking through it. "You're just going to run off into the snow and face a horde of murderers by yourself?"

Lightning pauses in her perusal and sighs. That is actually pretty close to the plan. Except : "No. I was figuring that I'd steal your ride, actually."

Sazh barks out a humorless laugh. "Lone wolf again, huh?"

As if she knows any other way. She considers answering him before deciding that she's not up for a fight with Sazh. Lightning lifts Snow's bandana from the pack, stares at it a moment and feels...relieved. She strokes the material once before gritting her teeth and shoving the bandana deep into her bag.

She's ridiculous.

"Tell me something, Soldier. Didn't you learn anything last year at all?"

Lightning huffs out an irritated breath.

"I learned plenty." She pulls the drawstrings on her bag tight with a hard snap of her wrist. "I learned that everything I thought I knew...everything for my whole life – was a lie. I learned that I didn't _know_ anything. That's what I learned."

That revelation still burns more than she'll admit.

"I learned that the majority of casualties in war are unarmed noncombatants." All those people killed in the Purge. The citizens of Palumpolum. The entire population of Gran Pulse. If Barthandelus had had his way, it would have been all of humanity as well. Instead, it was only two of her friends. It seems a small price – sacrificing Fang and Vanille for the world.

It seems a small price...but it isn't.

She's tired of sacrifices.

Lightning shifts her pack and shoulders it.

"I learned that if I wanted to change things, then I had _do_ something. Meaning well just..." she sighs, "doesn't mean a thing. Not really." _The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so on and so forth._ She gives Sazh her most level gaze. "And I learned that I'm tired of watching people – _innocent people_ – die."

Images of Fang and Vanille flash through her mind as she speaks the word 'innocent.'

"Yeah. Well, I'm tired of watching people die too," Sazh says, rubbing his head. "And that includes you."

"I'm not going to die," Lightning states.

"Oh, so you're immortal now?" She rolls her eyes and decides that arguing is a waste of time. He's worried, and she cares too much about him to belittle him for that. Sazh seems to realize the futility of sarcasm and takes a different approach.

"Just..." Sazh's whole body radiates exhaustion and Lightning finds her determination eroding. "Let's just talk about this for a minute, alright? Figure out a plan."

"We don't have time." She's not just saying that to avoid talking (though that's part of her motivation too). Every minute is precious; there is a countdown going on and she slept through a day of it.

"Look..." Sazh says, trying to project 'reasonable' though she can tell he feels anything but. "I've been stockpiling for this occasion, Soldier. I make one call and we can wipe out those bastards. All I need is the location."

She can see the frown lines around Sazh's mouth and between his eyes. She notes the tremors rumbling beneath his skin like earthquakes. It's like there's something inside him twitching to get out.

That 'something' is too familiar: monsters beneath the skin, the desire to kill raging through him unchecked. One misstep and Sazh will disappear into his bitter hatred.

She doesn't want Sazh to become a murderer. Sazh is too good to be like her.

Besides, Fang would kick Lightning's ass for allowing Sazh to destroy himself. They'd all come too close to being monsters last year to succumb to their baser instincts now.

"You're talking about murder."

"I'm talking about survival," Sazh counters. 'This is just one outpost, Soldier. _One!_ These people were friends. I helped them set up this outpost. Do you understand?" There's a vein bulging in Sazh's forehead. "They were good people, and we promised to protect them. Now look – just _look_ – at what these monsters have done!"

There's so much outrage in Sazh, she wonders if it will consume him right now. She wishes that Vanille were here to talk Sazh down. She always had such a knack with him. She wishes that Snow were here to irritate Sazh out of his rage.

She wishes Snow were here for too many reasons to count.

She stalls the train of thought. She has no time to think about Snow, and no time to long for his aid. She needs to stop thinking about him forever. He's where he belongs...

And dealing with this mess is her responsibility.

"That's why you shouldn't do this Sazh. You're too close to it." Lightning knows how destructive the warpath to vengeance can be. After she lost Serah to crystal stasis, she blazed a trail of destruction across Cocoon on a suicide mission to Eden. She didn't care who or what her crusade consumed. It was only a moment of clarity, wherein she saw her own rage reflected back from Hope's face, that showed her exactly how off the rails she'd gone. Viewing her own self-destruction in the mirror of Hope's shadowed eyes snapped her out of her downward spiral faster than a bucket of ice water. Her rage dissipated, her priorities changed. That moment changed her life – _saved_ her life.

_Hope_ saved her life.

She knows that what she feels now is worlds away from what she felt last year. As angry as she is right now, it's anger over senseless murder. It's retribution, but not vengeance. It's justice and salvation that she longs to deliver.

She has no personal stake in this mission. It's how she knows she'll succeed.

"Damn right, I'm close to it," Sazh barks. "I've had to bury good people. Families, Soldier! I had to bury children. I had to pick pieces of them off the floor, and try not to gag on the stench. This isn't about me, it's about them. Don't dismiss this out of hand. I think I understand where you're coming from here." She raises an eyebrow at him and he deflates a bit. "I'm not willing to let more good people die just to avoid doing something...distasteful."

Right. This approach isn't working. She needs to take a different tack.

"What about the hostages Sazh?" Lightning asks. "Have you thought about what launching a full scale attack will do to them?"

Sazh nods. "I have. But they're probably already dead, Soldier."

That thought had occurred to her. "And if they're not?"

"Then they're casualties of war." He flinches as he says it. She cringes at the idea that he's this far gone.

"I'm done with casualties of war, Sazh. I'm done with acceptable losses." Lightning drops her bag and crosses her arms. "It's how I justified...everything last year. We killed so many people, and whether we meant to, or we wanted to, it really doesn't change the facts anymore." _Not that it ever did._

Lightning reaches into her bag and pulls out the liquor that Fang gave her. Old Pulsian alcohol to go with old wounds. She takes a deep swallow and passes the bottle to Sazh. He looks stricken, but takes a drink.

"I did what I had to do last year, and I justified the deaths with thoughts of the 'greater good.' And maybe it was." She caps the bottle and puts it back into her bag. "But I'm done sacrificing people for the greater good. Wiping these men out in one fell swoop is definitely the smarter tactic here. I agree with you. Delaying at all risks letting them escape and regroup." Sazh leans against a wall pockmarked by gunfire, absorbs each word like a physical blow.

"I know all of these things," she continues. "I've considered them, and I've decided that I don't care. I'm not willing to sacrifice the few to save the many anymore. I'm done with compromising my humanity." It's too close to what the fal'Cie wanted-a sacrifice for the greater good. An end to suffering bought with the blood of the innocent. "I'm going to save these women. If they're still alive."

"And if they're not?" Sazh asks. He waits a beat and continues: "What about the next women, Soldier? What do we say to them if we let these animals get away?"

He's right, of course. Any future victims' blood will be on her hands; their deaths will be on her head.

She's willing to take the risk. There's no other choice for her anymore, and she doubts he'll be able to live with the guilt of killing hostages for any sort of greater good. It sounds a hell of a lot easier than it is. It should be an agonizing decision and he's made it too readily.

"I can't deal in theories or hypotheticals anymore, Sazh." Lightning lifts her bag again. "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."

Sazh nods; he looks almost relieved by her decision and she's certain she's made the right one. "So what's the plan then?"

Lightning gives him her most dangerous grin. "I'm going in."

"What?" Hope yells from the doorway, startling both Lightning and Sazh. "You're not serious. You can't...I mean—"

Lightning puts her hands on Hope's shoulders and waits for him to stop sputtering. He's gone past trembling into full on shaking. She keeps her voice calm and level. "I have to, Hope. There's no other way."

"You don't know that! We haven't even had time to think of another way."

"These women don't have time for brainstorming." She considers her next words, knowing that they might backfire on her. "Every minute they're there is hell, Hope."

"And you're just going to walk in and..." he pales. "And...do you know what they're going to do to you?"

Sure she does. Or, at least, she knows what they'll _try_ to do. Does he?

Lightning glances at Sazh for help but he shakes his head and turns away. He won't help her, but he won't to let Hope see the doubt and fear in his eyes either. They've already had this conversation, after all. Sazh blustered and cursed at her until he was stammering and red-faced. He said everything and nothing, unwilling to bring himself to talk about the torture that might befall her if her plan were to backfire.

She's not going to let Hope put words to his fears either.

"Look, Hope—"

"No. What is this about? You still looking to get yourself killed?" Hope's face is scarlet with rage. She should have expected him to throw her suicide run from last year in her face, but he catches her off guard with the accusation. She never really believed that he understood the nature of her mission then. He was so caught up in his own grief and swept up in the tornado of her rage that she really didn't think he noticed. He was just looking for someone as angry and hurt as he, someone who understood the impotence of his rage and the uselessness of his loss. Apparently, some distance, time and a bit of clarity offered him insight into Lightning's motivations.

_Damn it._

Tears pool in his eyes before one does a slow crawl down his face. "I thought..."

"Hope...this isn't like...that." Her explanation is lame; she knows it is. He snorts at her and shakes his head. "It's not! These people need help, Hope. That is all this mission is about."

"I don't believe you," he huffs and storms out of the house.

She nods at the numbing hurt spreading through her. She's not surprised – not by his lack of faith, nor at her own pain in the face of it – but she's never been more certain of anything than she is in this moment. This is the correct course of action for her. She's the perfect person for this job.

She's the _only_ person for this job.

She turns toward Sazh, finds him facing the corner staring at his feet. "So, you know the plan. You give me one day, then you launch the assault."

Sazh nods and half-turns toward her. "You sure..."

"If I'm not out in a day, I'm not getting out. And if this doesn't work..." _I don't want to be left there anyway_, she doesn't say.

She unbuckles her holster and places it on the ruined table. She feels more naked without her weapon than without clothing, but going in strapped defeats her objective. "I want Hope to have this if..."

"Please..." Sazh whispers and puts his hand over his face. He nods. "I'll take care of it."

"I know you will." She pulls out the knife from her birthday. Serah was so proud of this blade. So proud that she found Lightning the perfect birthday gift. Lightning smiles, thinking about her satisfaction at opening that gift. Lightning cherishes this blade; not for its beauty or utility – it has both in spades – but because of what it represents. It was a token of Serah's love, a symbol of her understanding of who Lightning was on a fundamental level.

It is also a reminder of the last day of her old life. That revelation might seem strange to other people, but that birthday marked the end of fal'Cie control over her. Lightning is still ashamed when she reflects on her behavior that day. She made Serah cry; she drove her from the house. That singular act set off a chain of events that changed the entire world. Lightning regrets her actions that day, but she doesn't regret the resolution that came because of those acts. She turned her back on the Sanctum – on her duty – and ran full tilt towards those who would destroy her sister.

This blade is a symbol of Lightning's decision to abandon duty for family, to abandon old teachings for new ideas. It is a symbol of the strength her sister gave to her; the resolve to do what was right, rather than what was easy.

It is a symbol of her sister's love, and Lightning never thought she would part with it.

Leaving it behind is harder than leaving her weapon, but the idea of it falling into enemy hands makes the decision simple. She won't have this beautiful blade used to butcher innocent people. She won't allow anyone to tarnish her knife, or desecrate what it represents.

She swallows, places the knife on the table and says, "This goes back to Serah, please."

Sazh looks pained as he nods at her request.

She pulls out the liquor and takes a whiff. Her eyes water (_this is the good stuff_, Fang's voice whispers) and she puts it on the table.

"This is yours," she tells Sazh. "She'd want you to have it."

Sazh looks ill. Lightning wishes this were easier, but some things need to be done, and sometimes doing those things is damn difficult.

Impossible, even.

She stares at her possessions lined up on the table. Pretty little things, all in a row. She considers that she's left nothing for Snow; decides that it's fitting. They've given each other all she'll ever allow–

_/his breath on her face, his fingers on her skin/ _

–and shared more than they had any right to. She reaches into her pack, finds the bandana and considers leaving it behind. She looks at the now coveted blond hairs in the knot, rubs the material between her fingers, lets her fingers ghost over the flaxen hair before she stuffs the bandana into her pocket.

She is leaving behind some of her most cherished possessions. She refuses to part with this small indulgence.

It may not be right that she gets to have this token while he gets nothing, but then no one has ever accused her of an overabundance of fairness.

"Alright then." The statement is unnecessary, but she feels like someone needs a lifeline here. "I'm off."

"Hold up a second there Soldier," Sazh grabs her arm.

"Sazh..." She really wanted to avoid a big scene here. She needs all her strength for the coming battle.

"I'm changing that bandage on your hand." She narrows her eyes at him, watches him pull something out of his pocket and feels a real smile spread across her face.

"Is that—?"

"Uh-huh." Sazh says as he pulls out the medkit and holds out a hand expectantly. Snow did the same thing when she first broke her hand on his face. She shoves aside the memory of his eyes and the bruises she caused.

She wishes Snow would stop haunting her.

She sits opposite Sazh and lets him start peeling off the bandages.

"You really are a genius, you know that Sazh?" Sazh smiles as he takes out gauze, tape and splints and lays them out on the table.

"Yeah, well someone around here ought to use their damn head."

* * *

The new bandage is heavier and bulkier than the old ones, but Lightning doesn't mind at all. Her fingers are immobilized, pinky and ring finger taped together, thick padding wadded and stiff between them. The splint around them, cupping side of her hand is cumbersome, but she appreciates any extra protection to support the break.

She has a feeling she's going to need to hit people – a lot of people – and destroying her hand in the process is not an appealing prospect. She pulls on her poncho and her mittens. She shoulders her pack and walks over to Sazh.

He refuses to look at her.

"I'll see you in twenty-four hours."

"Right." The nod comes a second after the word, as if he forgot that the gesture and word are a matched set. "Sure."

"Do me a favor, Sazh." He meets her eyes.

"Anything."

"Try not to look like I'm going off to my execution." She raises an eyebrow at him, curls her lip in what she hopes is a wry look. When he snorts and looks away she figures she came close enough to her mark. She finds his fear touching and upsetting at once. She has no desire to scare him. She has no doubt that she will succeed in this mission. Failure is not an option.

"Have a little faith," she tells him.

"I've got tons of faith, Soldier. I just..." he huffs, takes a deep breath and meets her eyes. "You're right. If anyone can pull this insanity off, it's you." He holds out a hand to shake. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She shakes his hand, then leans in and gives him a hard hug. He sighs against her, claps her hard on her back.

"Take care of everyone," she whispers. He's always taken care of them. Since the minute she met him, he's been taking care of them. He's a caretaker to his very core. That is why she could never allow him to become a killer.

Killing is her domain.

"I got 'em. You just take care of _you_. You hear me, Soldier?"

She pulls back, turns and leaves the house. She looks around for Hope, but doesn't see him. The idea of leaving with things-wrong between them-makes her sad. She looks around, looks toward the darkening sky and sighs. She needs to leave. The cliffs along the western border of the Steppe are going to take two hours by Snow Kat. She'll have to ditch it long before that and walk the rest of the way, and she needs to get there while it's still dark.

Her plan depends on it.

She trudges through shin deep snow to the Snow Kat and opens the door.

"So that's it? You just leave?"

She huffs out a breath, tosses her bag into the passenger seat and turns to look at Hope.

"It's going to be fine, Hope."

"I'm never going to understand why you're doing this. There has to be another way."

She rubs her brow, feels the aggravation building and shoves it aside as hard as possible. They don't have time to waste on fighting.

"There might be, but I can't think of it."

"Well, you didn't give me a chance." He throws his hands up and yells, "No one has _ever_ given me a chance."

"Hope..."

"No! My mother didn't say a word before taking that gun. She just did it...and died."

"It's not the same, Hope."

"Isn't it?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "No one told me about what was happening. About all the killings. And now you're going to go off and try and break into the camp..." he pauses, and gives her a look that fills her with dread. "I can come with you!"

"No!"

"I can help!" Hope exclaims. "I can. I'm not useless, Light."

"Wait—"

"If you don't take me with you, I'll just follow you. Just like last year. You know I will, Light. So you have to take me with you."

She grabs him by both arms and shakes him. Hard. She gives her anger its head and lets it run free. "Enough! You are not coming with me!

"But—"

"Absolutely not!" She shakes him hard enough to shut him up. "You listen to me. You are not coming with me because they will kill you!"

"Wha—"

"They'll kill you, Hope. Just like they did to all the men in this camp. Do you understand?"

"Maybe not."

"No. You're right. Maybe not." She grabs him by his soft baby-face, steels herself and says, "Maybe they'll see just how very _pretty_ you are, and you'll get to see exactly what monsters like to do with pretty young boys. Sound like fun?"

His eyes are huge and wet. He tries to shake his head in the negative but she holds him fast. She needs to convey how serious she is right now. The idea of him following her into that death camp is terrifying. He might die. He might _see_. He'll never be the same if he goes there, and that's supposing he makes it out at all.

"You. Are not. Coming with me." She punctuates each word with a tighter grip on his chin. "If you come, we'll both die." He opens his mouth but she squeezes him until he winces. "I can't worry about you too. I need to be focused in there Hope. If you're in there with me, I won't be able to concentrate." She eases her grip on his face, wipes the tears pouring down his face away. "I need you to live."

"I need you to live," he echoes.

"I will." He shakes his head and closes his eyes. "Once, you believed I could do anything."

"I was stupid!"

She laughs. "You were young," she corrects. She lets go of Hope's face and starts fixing his coat. She needs something to do with her hands to still the trembling. "I need you to believe that I can do this."

"Do you?" Hope asks. She furrows her brow at him. "Do you believe you can do it?"

Does she? Does she really think that she can pull off this crazy-ass plan of hers? Or is this just another way for her to punish herself? She's honest enough with herself to recognize the possibility, but this doesn't feel like her usual brand of fatalistic masochism. This feels like self-assurance.

This feels _right_**.**

"I do," she declares and she can see him considering her. He must see the truth in her eyes, because he subsides and nods.

"You should call your sister."

It's like a gut punch. She staggers at the thought of her sister. She shudders at the idea of speaking to her.

"She's worried about you."

"Hope—"

"No. Even if you're right and everything is fine, you should still call her. I mean...just in case."

_Damn it!_

What the hell is she going to say to Serah? All the reasons that she left her home burst free from their prison in her mind to run amok through her thoughts with big, sloppy boots. She doesn't want to know if Snow decided to be a jackass and blow up their lives; as long as she remains out of touch, she can pretend that she isn't a home-wrecker. As long as she maintains radio silence, life back home is status quo.

As long as she doesn't know the truth, she can continue telling herself lies.

She feels a pain in her heart match the one in her head.

Hope is right. She cannot go off on such a dangerous mission without speaking to her sister. Neither can she tell her sister about said mission.

She wants to smack Hope in the head for giving her something else to worry about when she should be preparing herself for her infiltration and rescue.

She swears, quiet and colorful, before meeting Hope's eyes.

"Give me your communicator," she orders.

"Where's yours?" She gives him a look that she hopes conveys her full-body irritation at his interference in her life. From the immediate fumbling and paling, she figures she can call that one a win. Hope holds the communicator out to her and says, "Here you go."

"Yeah, thanks," she snarls and seeks some distance and privacy. She mumbles under her breath about nosy kids being more trouble than they're worth and hopes that he hears her.

She dials the code for Serah's communicator and feels her stomach flutter when she hears the tone indicating that the other end is ringing. She rubs her eyes, listens to the second ring and starts to feel calmer. She can do a message. She can tell her sister she loves her, tell her that she's doing what's right and what makes her happy, all without having to hear her sister's fear or anger. She'll get to say goodbye without having to listen to recriminations. It's a great idea! She's got the message all drafted up in her head when the ringing cuts off.

"Hello?"

_Crap._ "It's me."

"Claire!" The relief in her sister's voice cuts right through her. "You're alright!"

"Yeah, Serah. I'm alright."

"Oh, I'm so...I'm so happy." Serah doesn't sound happy at all. She sounds like she's crying and Lightning's own eyes sting in response. "I was so worried."

"I'm sorry." It sounds lame to her own ears. She can just imagine how pale the apology is for Serah.

"You should be! That was the stupidest thing you've ever done." Serah snaps. Then she snorts and chuckles, sniffles once and says, "But since you're okay, I'll forgive you."

Serah always forgives her too easily. Lightning doesn't deserve her. "You always do."

"What?" Lightning closes her eyes and berates herself. Something in her tone gave her away. She knew this call was a bad idea. "Claire? What's wrong? What's going on?"

It was easier to be strong and brave before she thought about her sister. Dying doesn't terrify Lightning anywhere near as much as the thought of breaking Serah's heart.

"Nothing," she lies.

"Don't lie to me," Serah insists. "I know you! Don't you think I know when something's wrong?"

Of course Serah knows when something is wrong. She's smart and sensitive, and she makes Lightning ache with pride.

"Okay." She clears the frog from her throat. "Listen, Serah. There's something I have to do. And it's a little bit dangerous." Serah starts protesting but Lightning talks right over her. "I don't want you to worry—"

"Too late!"

"—because I'll be fine." Lightning is not lying now. She believes that she will be fine, and once she disconnects this call, she has to push thoughts of her sister from her mind in order to make sure her beliefs become reality. She cannot worry about Serah and take care of herself; last year's suicide run to Eden proved just how crazy worrying for her sister makes her behave. "I'll be fine. I need you to believe me."

"What are you doing?" Serah asks. She sniffles and swallows and Lightning knows that her sister is putting on her bravest face. She can picture the downward twist and quiver of her bottom lip, the crinkle between her eyes indicative of her battle against tears. Serah clears her throat and manages to sound calm when she asks, "Can't you tell me that?"

Serah fills her with pride and shame in equal measures. Everyone who knows them believes that Lightning is the brave Farron sister, and that Serah is delicate and fragile. What none of them realize is that Serah is her anchor. Lightning would have flown apart and self-destructed after her parents died if it weren't for Serah.

Taking care of Serah is all Lightning has ever done. It's all that holds her together. Serah doesn't need Lightning anywhere near as much as Lightning needs Serah.

Serah hasn't needed her for a long while now. Lightning will need Serah until the day she dies.

"I don't..." Lightning considers the request, and starts again. "Do you really think that's going to help you? I want you not to worry about me. I need you to believe me when I tell you that I'm going to be fine."

Because if Serah doesn't believe her – believe _in_ her – then what chance does she have?

"And you think telling me means I won't believe you." Serah pauses. "That's not very reassuring, Sis."

"I need to do this, Serah," Lightning insists. She doesn't know what to do, and she's not used to feeling indecisive. If Serah asks her not to go, she's not certain she'll have the strength to refuse her. Refusing Serah has always bordered on impossible for Lightning. "It's important. There are lives at stake."

There's a long pause; long enough that Lightning wonders if the call has dropped. Finally: "Okay. Keep your secrets if they make you feel better. But you'd better keep your promise too."

"Haven't I always?" Lightning returns then flinches.

_No._ She promised that she would never hurt Serah and it seems that she's always hurting her. She promised to protect her, and she drove her to the fal'Cie that long-ago day. She promised her that her life would be happy, and she stole her lover's heart.

She promised she'd always be there for her, and she ran away from their lives like some sort of thief in the night.

Serah deserves better – has always deserved better.

"Yes," Serah replies without missing a beat, tearing Lightning from her own self-flagellation. Serah's faith makes Lightning smile. "And that's why I'm going to do what you ask. I'm going to trust you'll be okay."

"Thank you," Lightning breathes and feels a thousand pound weight lift from her. "I have to go now."

"Wait! Light! About Snow..."

That thousand pound weight hits her right on her head. She's dizzy and flailing. "Serah...I can't talk about—"

"No—"

"I have to—"

"No, wait—"

"—go. I love you."

"Claire!"

Lightning disconnects the call on Serah's huff.

_Smooth, Lightning. Real smooth._

That sucked, but she cannot discuss Snow with Serah. Not right now, and, if she has her way, not ever. If he opened his big, stupid mouth, she can't know it. She'll be too distracted and end up getting herself – and everyone else for that matter – killed. And if he didn't open his mouth, she'll have to listen to her sister talk about wedding plans, and extract promises from Lightning about being the Maid of Honor. The very thought makes Lightning sick for more reasons than she can possibly count.

She's a terrible person and a worse sister.

That whole conversation could have gone better. She closes her eyes, sees her sister's sad face before her and flinches. She gives her head a rough shake to abolish the image, ends up with picture of Snow on her couch, staring up at her with love and loathing in his eyes.

_Of course, it could have gone worse too,_ she concedes.

She opens her eyes, blinks away moisture that she refuses to acknowledge, exhales a shaky breath, turns, and walks back to Hope.

He looks shifty and a tad bit satisfied. She gives him her most scathing look, waits until he deflates before showing mercy. She smirks at him, hands him his communicator and says, "Thank you, Hope."

He smiles at his feet and turns red to the tips of his ears.

She surprises them both by pulling him into a tight hug. He's grown in the past year, she realizes. Where he used to fit under her chin, he's now almost eyelevel with her. He's still too skinny by half, but that's nothing unusual on Gran Pulse. Food is harder to come by now that they have to grow it and hunt it themselves.

There's so much to do on this world. She cannot believe how much time she's wasted...

Something in her snaps.

It's enough.

It's enough berating and self-flagellation. She wasted time, but that is not a capital offense. She's tired of feeling bad about things she cannot change.

Guilt begets wallowing, which leads to inactivity which, in turn, begets more guilt. It's a pointless and irritating cycle and she's done with it. She has things to do and if she wastes time thinking about her failures, she will fail again.

She can't afford to fail. There are lives on the line here – lives other than hers.

She releases Hope, plants a soft kiss on his burning cheek, ruffles his hair once before climbing into the Snow Kat.

"Be careful, Light," he begs. She nods. She has every intention of being careful.

"See you soon," she promises.

* * *

Driving the Snow Kat is what Lightning imagines driving a dishwasher on skis would be like. The machine is bulky, awkward and lumbering; turning is a less a decision than an occupation. Going straight and holding steady is more a stroke of luck than anything. The vehicle is cumbersome: all veering jerks and hard shimmies that jar and pull at her shoulders, and set a small fire in her lower back.

It's a beautiful piece of creative technology and it makes Lightning grin.

The Snow Kat eats up the land faster than Atomos. The interior is warm and wonderful as she traverses the terrain. The snow stretches out for miles: forever, it seems. The sunset paints the world the color of blood and the sight is sickening and awesome. Red fades to blush; to purple; to blue, before the world dims. When darkness falls, the surface of Gran Pulse more closely resembles the silver of the stars in the heavens than the lush, green world she first encountered. The view through the foggy, speckled windshield, combined with the hum of the engine and the rattle of the frame is hypnotic. Lightning's mind blanks out then wanders—

_/'Just once,' and then there's lips covering hers, a tongue filling her mouth, twirling, flicking, sending a jolt like electricity to her brain to ricochet down to her toes. Heat spreads sweet and sticky as jam through her whole body. Her fingers are numb where they claw and clutch. Her head spins. Her mouth tingles and she quivers when he whispers, 'Sorry' against her over-sensitized, parted lips. Then he proves he's not at all sorry by sucking her bottom lip into his mouth. He nibbles the moan right out of her, swallows it down like a thief. Her pulse quickens and her focus narrows until the entire world exists only where breath mingles and hot flesh meets.../_

She shakes her head and swears aloud – at him, at herself, at the whole damn mess that the fal'Cie created.

Why did Snow have to force this issue? Things were chugging along just fine until he buckled beneath the burden. He was supposed to be strong and steadfast. He promised he would love Serah forever, and Lightning counted on his belief in his own hero persona to hold him true to his word. He never let her down before, not even when she believed – with every fiber of her being – that he would fail. He almost had her convinced that he really was the noble hero.

Then he kissed her and changed everything. One stolen moment of breath and tongue became the wrecking ball smashing their precarious world.

No matter what she does, or how hard she tries, she cannot purge the taste or feel of him from her memory. She can't forget the heat of his body, or her own desire to know the weight of it pressing onto her.

She is the worst sort of person. It was bad enough wanting this – wanting him – before she recognized the feeling as want at all. It was bad enough lusting after him when it was unconscious and disguised as discomfort. It was bad enough loving him...

She can't go there. She can _never_ go there.

It was all terrible, but this feeling – this _pining_ – is so much worse. It's covetous and sinful.

It's a betrayal of her beloved sister. She knows it is.

So why the hell can't she stop?

"Enough of this nonsense, Lightning." She spends the next five minutes battling with the Snow Kat – also known as 'turning' – in order to conceal it alongside the cliffs to the north. She eases the vehicle to a coast, lets it skid to a stop. She kills the engine and soaks up the remainder of the heat before the bite of the cold outside wriggles its way into the vehicle's cab.

She reaches into her pack, pulls out her communicator, turns it on and drops it onto the passenger seat. The beacon will lead Sazh right to the Snow Kat so he can retrieve it tomorrow if she doesn't make it.

She murders the thought before it has a chance to set down roots. A seed of doubt will get her killed.

She roots around in her pack for anything else she can't bear to lose. Her knuckles brush against something hard and she gropes for it, pulls it from the pouch.

Odin.

She forgot she brought Odin with her on this journey. The Eidolon is sleeping – dormant. She has no more magic, focus, brand, or power to summon it from its sleep.

Too bad. Odin might be useful on this pseudo-suicide mission.

She drops the stone back into her bag. No one will know what it is, and she can't bring herself to leave Odin behind. They've been through too much together.

She will face this trial as she faced her last one – with her Eidolon. If she is to die _(don't think such things)_, she'll do so with her Eidolon.

She wonders when she became a sentimental ass. She thinks of blond hairs trapped in a knotted bandana and decides that Snow is to blame. Again. It seems he's to blame for all her faults, current and otherwise. Soon she'll begin rewriting her personal history in order to cast herself as a victim of Snow and his asininity.

She beats all her thoughts of Snow into submission; they'll do her no good tonight. Or ever, really, but tonight is her major concern. One misstep this night will bring death – or worse – with the sunrise.

She shivers, looks at her breath fogging up the inside of the windows, checks the sky through the side window.

_Time to go._

She steps out of the vehicle into the frigid night air and marches toward destiny.

* * *

TBC...

I know. I know! Still no sign of Snow, right? Sorry. I'm working on it, I swear. He does, however, always seem to be on Lightning's mind. And by the way, has anyone seen the new trailers for XIII-2? Serah's hanging out with some new guy. It's the stuff of Snow/Lightning fanfic everywhere!

I look forward to hearing from you.


	9. The Faces That you Meet

Still not mine. If it were, Serah would disapper through time with Noel and leave Lightning and Snow alone.

A/N: Sorry for the very long delay. I've upped the rating for Mature Themes here, but not for any sort of sex. Sorry to anyone who thought this story might suddenly turn happy.  
Thank you to those who continued to prod me and remind me that there are people waiting for updates: eleanorlavish, Skyfire79 and Fading Into Darkness have all pushed in the past few weeks or so for an update. I promised Chapter 31 of Evolution but you got this instead. Chapter 31 is done, but still requires revision. Expect it in the next week or so.

**Warning: This chapter deals with disturbing themes, which should not come as a shock to anyone who has been reading the story. If you are sensitive, don't read it. I don't usually bother warning for things that ought to be obvious (and considering the plot of this story, it really _ought_ to be obvious), but I feel that there's enough disturbing content in this chapter to give you a chance to turn back.  
**

* * *

"He who does not punish evil commands it to be done."  
-Leonardo da Vinci

-The Faces that You Meet-

"Why did you think this was a good idea again?" she asks herself after a half hour of walking through shin deep, ice crusted snow. Her ankles are sore from the effort of plodding along, and her feet are hollering at her for allowing them to go numb so soon after thawing.

Her nose is numb, her cheeks are burning, and her fingers throb with sluggish blood flow. She wonders if cold thickens blood. The way all her body systems feel – like they're struggling to continue working with ice in her veins – makes her wonder if she wouldn't bleed something slushy if she were to cut herself.

This walk is taking too long.

She wonders, not for the first time, if perhaps she didn't hallucinate her entire adventure trailing the caravan. Maybe she followed a herd of Adamantoises and mistook them for murderers in her delirium. The idea bothers her – frightens her, even – for its possibility. It's not the most preposterous thing she's ever thought.

It's not even the dumbest thing she's thought _tonight_, for that matter.

She crests a hill, catches her foot on something and gets pitched forward into the snow. Momentum sends her sprawling, then gravity grabs hold of her and she flails a bit on her way down the icy hill, rolls and spins, gets dizzy, soaked and bruised before coming to rest at the bottom of the incline. She gasps and groans.

That sucked.

She sits up and shakes herself off like a wet dog, spies light in the distance.

She's here.

She swears at herself about her carelessness. Her exposure. That little fumble could have cost her the whole mission. She pulls herself out of the snowdrift, keeps low to the ground as she creeps for cover.

Reconnaissance: it's never been her forte. Lightning is more blunt instrument than surgical scalpel, more hand grenade than sniper bullet. She's always been a hit first and ask questions later kind of girl. If it were only her life in the balance, she'd stick with what works for this mission.

She can plan an attack with the best of them, and execute it better than most. But creeping around and gathering information? Yeah.

No.

That's not her thing.

Still, she's the best woman for this job because she's the only woman for this job. She works her way around the perimeter of the camp until she finds a good angle and then settles in to survey.

Usually a plan involves a way in and another out. She's got the former covered. It's the latter that's her problem right now. Slaughtering her way out is her last resort as it will involve the highest casualty count amongst potential survivors.

There are no acceptable losses as far as she's concerned, so fighting her way out of the camp will not happen unless there are no survivors for her to rescue.

She shivers at the prospect, then shakes her head.

No. She's not here to doubt herself. These types of men don't take prisoners just to execute them. The gut shot bodies of the men at the destroyed outpost are proof of sadism. It wouldn't be satisfying for a sadist to just kill the hostages...not when torture, terror and degradation are available options.

Those women have to be alive; they may wish they weren't, but they are. For now.

Lightning knows it.

A sadist enjoys destruction, and destroying a person takes time. It's like peeling an onion – you have to strip down layers and layers before there's nothing left.

Lightning learned just how hard it is to crush the human spirit during her time as a l'Cie. In the midst of the massacre known as the Purge, people were stripped of their homes, their dignity and their humanity. They were herded like cattle onto trains to be 'purged' to Pulse. They were promised a forced emigration to Hell, but all they encountered at the end of their train rides were the business ends of PSICOM weapons.

They watched neighbors, friends, family and strangers murdered en masse before their eyes. The Hanging Edge was filled with the wails of children, the screams of the dying and the stench of the dead.

She expected the civilians around her to be less than useless.

They surprised her. She remembers Sazh telling her 'they want to fight.'

'Good for them,' she replied, and moreover, she meant it. She had expected everyone on that train to cower and whimper like whipped dogs. She expected them to get in her way or get themselves killed in a panic. Instead, they took up arms and fought for their lives. Had Lightning not been so fixated on her destructive goal, she might have been moved by their tenacity. Unarmed civilians fighting off trained soldiers? It was surreal. But they hadn't just fought. Oh no.

In the end, they won!

The human spirit is a very hard thing to destroy. So, those women are still alive. Lightning is betting her life on it.

She watches the camp for movements, assesses the layout. She remembers the function of the large back building – a garage of sorts for their war machines. The inner perimeter is lined with what Lightning assumes are barracks, except for the northernmost structure. The lack of windows as well as it's fortified position would suggest it as food storage, but Lightning would bet her life it's the prison.

Is betting her life on it, in fact.

Furthest point in the camp, with a mountain behind it, a perimeter fence around it, and buried behind lines of enemies.

Perfect spot for the prisoners. Chance of rescue before the prisoners are executed – approaching zero. Chance of escape without being seen? Less than zero.

This is going to suck.

Lightning takes a steadying, fortifying breath. Plan B it is.

* * *

Alright, so Plan A had always been a long shot. The idea of sneaking in and out unchallenged when her nature tends less towards sneaky and more towards kill-'em-all-let-god-sort-'em-out was far-fetched. Still, she's more naturally inclined towards sneaking than role-playing, so who could blame her for hoping?

Plan B, on the other hand, requires something far more challenging for Lightning than mere stealth – meekness and surrender.

Lightning's jaw clenches at the very thought. She's never surrendered to a thing in her entire life. Doing it now is going to chafe worse than a too-small pair of wet, wool trousers.

Lightning works her way around the dune towards the front of the complex and gives up the sneak part of the game.

She needs to stumble on the compound. She needs to seem desperate. She—

"Hold it right there!"

The voice startles her, makes her stumble. She turns toward it but catches a hand between the shoulder blades that sends her tumbling forward off the top of the dune. Her arms pinwheel for a moment before gravity grabs hold of her and tosses her about like a rag doll. The rolling pummels the wind out of her, and the snow burns her already icy skin.

She comes to a rest at the bottom of the dune, out of breath and disoriented.

"Crap," she murmurs.

"Don't move!"

_Double crap! _She freezes. She hears footsteps crunching and she feels her heart kick up a fuss in her chest, tastes the blood in her mouth before the adrenaline charging through her veins steals all the moisture from her mouth.

She hadn't wanted to be _literally_ caught off-guard.

"What have we got here?" The large, hulking figure steps into her periphery, pauses beside her and nudges her with the toe of a boot. She takes in the lone figure.

Patrol. Appearances are deceptive: patrols always come in pairs, which means there's another guard lurking around. If this group is even halfway decent, the partner would be close.

Well, it's not ideal circumstances, but it gets the job done.

_Showtime._

He carries his rifle in a loose grip before him. She could disarm him and break his jaw with the butt of the rifle before he has a chance to let out a yell. A swift elbow jab could crush his larynx. She feels her muscles coil to do just that, to show this terrorist what a real soldier can do. She wants to watch fear fill his eyes as the life drains from him in a slow hiss.

_Remember the plan. Infiltrate. Locate the hostages. Escape before Sazh turns the camp into a smear on Gran Pulse._

She beats her instincts into submission and forces her muscles to unclench.

* * *

_/"You can't attack these men alone, Soldier. You're good, but you're not that good."_

_"'I'm not going to attack, Sazh." Lightning tells him. "And for the record, I am _so_ that good."_

_A lack of confidence has never been her problem._

_"Yeah, yeah. You're amazing and we bow before your magnificence." Sazh is only being semi-sarcastic. She smiles at him until she sees him catch up to the conversation. "Wait. What do you mean you're not going to attack? What's your plan then?"_

_She braces herself for the explosion._

_"I'm going to get captured."/_

* * *

"P-Please..." she whispers, hopes the word doesn't sound as bogus as she feels. "Help me. My transport..."

"Oh, I'll help you alright." He reaches out and grabs her by the hair, drags her up and out of the snow. She feels hair tearing and she grits her teeth. The squawk that she lets loose isn't half as contrived as she wants it to be.

Gaining her feet in shin deep snow with someone using her hair like a leash is difficult. Her struggles amuse the man and he jerks her to the side so she lands on her knees. He presses her face toward his crotch and she recoils. He yanks on her hair until she hears tearing an feels a sharp pain in her scalp. Tears leak from her eyes, forced out by the intense pain. She reaches both hands up and grabs his wrist, digs fingernails in until he hisses and pulls her all the way to her feet.

Every instinct in her insists that she end the assault before it starts. She forces herself not to react as he grabs her hair again to pull her body flush against him. One defensive move will give away the game. _Weak and helpless, Lightning. You're a victim. You're chattel. _

She feels her hackles rise and her fists clench at the thought. Her thighs tense up in preparation for a leg-sweep. It takes all her effort to keep her muscle-memory in check.

This submissive, terrified victim thing is going to be harder than she thought.

She lets out a breath and goes limp, babbles about Amphisbaena attacks and dead companions. He slaps her to shut her up, then pulls her face to his. His breath is enough to make her eyes water. He drops his one handed grip on his rifle to get two hands on her body, and the temptation to snap his neck is almost too much to resist.

She squashes it; she needs to get through the gates, and right now, she's half-way to her goal.

* * *

_/'You're out of your damn mind!'_

_"Alright, hear me out."_

_"I don't listen to lunatics! Are you sure you didn't hit your head?" He grabs her head to look in what she considers an overly dramatic move. He made his damn point without the theatrics. "Maybe all the cold froze your damn brain."_

_"Sazh! Listen." He shuts up, but he sure as hell doesn't look happy about it. "If we attack them with the intention of rescue, what's to stop them from killing the hostages?"_

_"What's to stop them from just killing you?" _

_He's got a point, and he knows it. He presses his advantage: "You're not their type, Soldier."_

What the hell is wrong with her?_ "I'm a woman," she argues, trying not to sound defensive. _

_"You're a soldier."_

_"You see a soldier when you look at me because you know who and what I am. They will see..." The thought makes her face heat and her ears clog with humiliated rage. Sazh looks away from her and stares into the middle-distance – loses himself in thoughts of worst-case scenarios. She doesn't enjoy saying: "They'll see another object to use, and don't you doubt that."_

_Sazh recoils as if slapped. "And why are you going in there again? You're not really making a great case for you _not_ being insane, you know."_

_"Because they'll walk me right in where they keep the hostages." Sazh shakes his head, opens his mouth to protest more. She talks fast. "And then I'm going to teach them what the phrase, 'don't judge a book by its cover' actually means."/_

* * *

"Aren't you just..." his hand wanders over her body and she clenches her jaw as he grabs a handful of flesh and twists. Hard. She winces and he grins at her, presses his growing erection against her thigh. "...lovely? I'll help you, but what'll you do for me then? You gonna be nice to me?"

To hell with the plan. She'll submit to being groped as a cost of doing business. Anything beyond that is going to cost this asshole his male parts.

He pinches her again just to see her pain.

_And his life._

"Jace? That you? What the hell are you doing?" The pig – Jace – snarls at the interruption, squeezes her hard enough to bruise and mumbles something unflattering under his rotten breath.

"Piss off!" More footsteps. The fingers in her hair twist even tighter, wring tears from her eyes as he bites her neck.

She may have to go with Plan C. Too bad she hasn't thought of one yet.

"Are you nuts? You took one of the bitches out?" Lightning would bristle at the use of the word 'bitches' but seriously, she expected nothing less. "The boss is going to kill you."

"Nah. Found her." He exhales his rotten breath into her face. "How's that for luck? Her transport had an unfortunate encounter with one of the nastier beasties. She came here looking for _help_." He sneers and huffs a laugh into her face.

"Help?" The newcomer looks almost horrified. "Oh, sweetheart, did you ever take a wrong turn."

_Sweetheart? _She thinks she prefers being called a bitch. She looks over at the other sentry and he looks almost...sad?

_What?_

It's ridiculous and insulting. She wants feed him his teeth one by one.

"Come on. We gotta take her in."

"Why?" Jace sounds like a petulant child being relieved of his favorite toy. "No one's gotta know. We can do her and dump her."

If that's his plan, she'll have to improvise, adapt and overcome. She has no problem leaving this man drowning in his own blood, if he insists.

A tiny part of her may even be looking forward to it. A little bit of retribution might be cathartic. After all, she's had to endure his hands and his mouth on her already. She has no problem returning the favor, and she has no doubt that she can make the experience for him twice as painful as he made it for her.

"Well, I'm not getting flogged over a some piece of ass, so if you want to deal with the boss's shit, that's fine. You saw what he just did to that that guy? You want some of that tasty action for yourself? Personally, I like my skin intact, thanks ever so." Sentry B – the rapist with a heart of gold – pauses for dramatic effect. "Let go and I'm bringing her in. You'll thank me for it later." Jace curses, squeezes and pinches hard enough to pull a very real yelp out of her.

"I'll see you later, bitch." He releases her, grabs his crotch and adjusts himself. "We're going to have a real good time."

She stumbles at the sudden relief and sentry number two grabs her by her injured hand. She pulls the hand out of his grip with a grunt and he mumbles, "Sorry," and catches her around the upper arm.

_Sorry?_

He steadies her on her feet in the snow. She watches as Jace takes off, mumbling about all the fun they are going to have later.

"You alright?"

The question sends her blood pressure high enough to turn all the snow directly to steam. Her head pounds, her face heats and her fingernails cut through her mittens to embed themselves in her palms. It takes a steadying breath before she feels like she can assume her role as the meek victim. She sniffles and nods, buries the glare as deep as it can go.

She's afraid it's not deep enough.

"Come on. Let's go."

* * *

The march through the camp is humiliating. She's pinched, poked, prodded, groped and grabbed so many times that she is red-faced, aching and bruised in both her body and ego.

Her 'escort' through the camp offers her the helpful advice to "Keep your head down and your mouth shut."

She bites her tongue, banks her rage and lets herself be dragged across the camp. She says nothing as she is 'frisked' – if one can call molestation frisking – and then relieved of her possessions. The stench of alcohol is thick and pungent, and she feels an enormous gratitude that that these men are even bigger amateurs than she suspected. While the small group of guards is distracted going through her bag and turning out her pockets, she scans the surroundings and formulates a plan.

The layout of the buildings creates gaping blind spots in the camp – either they're too arrogant to care, or too stupid to notice.

If she were a betting woman, she'd pick the latter.

She checks the angles on all the watchtowers, spies a deep shadow behind a building near the perimeter fence that looks to be out of line-of-sight of all the lookout posts. The only place that really has a clear view to the space behind the buildings would be up on the cliffs that form the rear wall of the camp. She glances up – and up, and up some more, until the cliffs meet the sky. She can't see any post up there, but that doesn't mean there's no sniper. If this were her camp, she'd post a sniper on the back wall – an excellent marksman with a high-power rifle and a rocket launcher would offer maximum security with minimal supplies.

Considering all the mistakes she's seen, she doubts they're good enough to take such precautions.

Then again, she didn't make it across Gran Pulse last year by offering anything the benefit of the doubt. Erring on the side of caution means that she's going to need a distraction inside the camp to divert all attention from the back wall, and the shadowed blind spot behind the barracks. She thinks of Sazh re-wrapping her broken hand and smiles.

Distraction won't be a problem. All she needs to do is use it to lead the prisoners into the blind spot where they can cut through the fence, slip through and disappear into the shadows of the mountain and the recesses of Mah'Habara.

Then Sazh can bring the rain.

She sucks her teeth and refocuses her attention on the gaggle of guards surrounding her. She watches as they toss her clothing and supplies onto the floor, and stifles a smile when they allow her to keep what they term her 'pet rock.' They cackle at their own cleverness and Lightning has to bite her lip until she tastes blood to stifle a derisive snort.

She holds Odin's stone in both hands and wonders if it would be possible to summon the Eidolon. She would take great pleasure watching Odin cut a path through this pack of wolves.

She goes back to surveying the layout, notes the positions of the turrets and the location of the bunkers in relation to the back building – the prison. A hard jerk on her arm startles her from her perusal, catches her off-guard and almost tears her off her feet.

Her stumble elicits a round of taunting that makes her face and ears burn.

Let them laugh now. It's the last chance they'll ever have.

Escape won't be easy, but considering her captors are a drunken rabble rather than a tight-knit unit, it won't be impossible either. The shadows provide cover, and the perimeter fence is flimsy. All the turrets point outward and the sentries are less than observant. After all, she'd managed to get close enough to the camp to spy and survey.

Twice. And the first time she was hypothermic and exhausted.

The nameless sentry who brought her into the camp mutters under his breath and shakes his head as he herds her toward the 'prison.' He pulls a key from around his neck and slides it into what looks like a Master Lock. A smooth twist of his wrist is followed by a click, thud and squeal, and the door opens to reveal the shadowed room beyond. The guard turns toward her with a look that bears too close a resemblance to regret.

In that moment, she thinks she hates him more than the others. At least they don't pretend to be horrified by their own depravity. This man almost looks apologetic, and yet here he is shoving her into a prison to face a future of gang rape, torture and eventual murder.

She can't wait until this place is wiped off the face of Gran Pulse, but she hopes she meets this one in her escape. She'd like to have a chance to teach him the true meaning of regret.

Something of her loathing must show in her eyes because the regret vanishes under a wave of unanticipated rage. He shoves her into the room and swings the butt of his rifle at her face. The move catches her off guard and she takes the full weight of the blow across her temple and cheekbone.

The thwack resounds in her head and echoes when her skull connects with the ground. She chases after her ebbing consciousness, watches it circle the drain as she reaches for it with grasping fingers—

_"Welcome to Hell, bitch,"_ he snarls and slams the door.

—and she loses the race by a nose.

* * *

**_"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."_**  
**_-Harriet Beecher Stowe_**

* * *

Part II:

Consciousness comes in stages.

The first thing she notices is the smell. It's a putrid amalgam of body fluids, mold, dust, and stale air, all overlaying the stink of pain and fear.

She gags, and it sets off sparks behind her eyes and unconsciousness threatens to drag her under again.

_No!_

She grunts and rolls her head, searches her memory for an explanation. The images are fuzzy but she pieces them together enough to realize where she is and how she got here.

Her heart hammers away in her chest and throat which aggravates the pounding – stabbing – throbbing pain in her head.

_Get your fear under control, lest it grow into panic. Fear can be an ally, but panic is always the enemy._

She reaches for her training like a lifeline and hangs on with both hands and her teeth! She needs to keep a tether to consciousness. She can't afford to waste time. She can't fight if she's unconscious! She didn't come here just to die.

_Get control of your breathing._

There may not be time to waste, but she needs to reassert control.

She takes a breath through her nose and holds it when the pain in her head goes supernova. She blows it out and repeats the process. Counting...counting...counting until the bright pain dulls to an exquisite but manageable agony.

She tries opening her eyes, but someone must have pulled the pin out of the grenade in her head and the small movement triggers an explosion that sends her plummeting into semi-consciousness.

The next time she rouses she notices the sounds. The room buzzes with an unidentifiable white noise. It's muffled. Distant. But now that she hears it, she zeroes in and listens...

It sounds like breathing. Or maybe voices. Whatever they are, they either too far away to hear, or the blow to her head rang her bell but good.

She spends some time floating in between – a place where her senses are still functioning, but her pain is duller. She tries to identify all the smells and sounds in the room.

The next thing she realizes is that there are hands on her, pawing at her clothes. There's a body pinning her down. She feels the panic swirl up to choke her and she struggles. The weight on her gets heavier as her attacker muscles his way between her thighs, and she feels the vibrations of what can only be laughter rumbling against her prone body.

"Told you we were going to have some fun," he whispers, sweeps a stinky, clammy tongue up her cheek.

Revulsion and humiliation war for top spot, but she can't think about either.

She stops moving and breathes. Focuses.

The hands work at her shirt until she feels cold air spill across her abdomen. Fingers pinch her breast before moving down to work on her pants. She shoves the panic aside and concentrates on her training.

She needs to move fast; she's got one chance here.

She grabs both wrists, pins the right one at her chest and shoves the left one into his waist.

"What...?"

She lifts her hips, brings her left leg up under his left arm and her right over his right shoulder.

"Bitch..."

_Bastard._

She hooks her right foot under her left calf and squeezes. He curses and sputters at her as she uses all her strength to cut off air and blood flow. She feels him trying to break the lock with his left arm so she straightens and twists, pins his right arm to her body, works it until it's trapped under her right armpit, while she arches her body and squeezes.

She's only ever used a triangle choke in training. Back then her big concern was not to go too far, afraid her zeal in combat might severely injure or kill her partner.

She has no such worries now; severe injury or death is the goal.

She squeezes harder, ignores the pain pounding through her head as the man's struggles weaken. There's a dim sallow light filling the room – her attacker must have brought a lantern of some sort – and she watches as the man's face turns purple with trapped blood. His eyes are wide for the few moments it takes for the move to steal consciousness. Then they droop. His body goes lax and still she doesn't let go.

She's in no condition for hand to hand. Only one of them is going to get off this floor alive and she's determined to claim the prize. Her head swims as she continues to squeeze the life from him.

She holds until she's certain he won't get up, then squeezes a bit more to be safe. She's pretty certain she's sporting a concussion, so trusting her senses is going to be an issue.

Err on the side of caution. Two full minutes later she decides that if he gets up, she deserves to lose.

She releases her hold, feels a trembling spasm start in her lower back, and takes a deep breath to work through it. His dead weight collapses across her leg and she shoves and wriggles until the man she just murdered is no longer touching her. Her breath erupts from her in a broken wheeze and she shakes her head, closes her mouth and concentrates on getting it under control.

_Snap out of it. Hyperventilation might end in unconsciousness. Keep it together._

She pulls her shaking body upright, wraps her arms around her knees, and gets her first look at the surroundings.

She almost wishes for darkness.

The room is small and empty but for the lone, dingy, sagging cot. The metallic frame sports cuffs at all four corners. The bare mattress is stained and crusted with filth that can only be various dried body fluids, including some very conspicuous spattered bloodstains. She can't help but be grateful that the savage she just killed – Jace, she realizes – was too interested in making good on his threats to bother locking her to the cot.

Lightning adjusts her clothes, finds tears where the dead man on the floor got a bit too over-zealous. She scowls and kicks at the body, jerks back when an arm twitches. She lets out an undignified squeak and gropes next to her for something – anything – that might pass as a weapon.

Her fingers touch smooth stone – _Odin!_ – and she closes her hand around it, swings it up, across her body and down again, to smash onto the man's skull. Blood arcs up, spatters across her shirt and her face, speckles into her open eyes, splashes over her hand and smears across the stone.

She lifts to do it again – to keep hitting until she sees brain – but she stops mid-bash. She feels like she's unraveling, veering off into full-blown panic. She places the Odin stone on the ground and presses two fingers into the man's carotid artery.

Nothing: no pulse; no respiration. No life.

He's dead, and probably was before she brained him. She knows that bodies can twitch after death. She's seen it once before – something to do with electrical impulses still firing through the nervous system.

_Get a grip. Panic will get you killed. If you die, so do all the hostages._

She stands up and watches the world swim in and out of focus. She blinks through it, touches her temple and winces. Her fingers come away tacky and dark with drying, clotting blood. The bruise is likely spectacular, but blood loss isn't an immediate concern. She can't speak to the severity of the closed head injury but her skull is intact and not gushing blood.

Small favors. She'll take what she can get.

She opens and closes her jaw to gauge if it's broken. It snaps and crackles like breaking glass, sends sparkles of color across her vision with each movement. She takes her chin between thumb and forefinger and wriggles it around a bit. Tears pour down her face as the hinge lets out a dry pop. She curses, presses her palm against her face and waits for the pain to lessen. A few deep breaths later, she prods both cheekbone and orbital bone. The touches cause tears to pour from her swelling eye, but the pain holds steady; the bones are whole, if bruised. She wipes her eye with her thumb.

_Okay, then._

She catches sight of the blood smeared on her hands and wipes them on her shirt. She looks down at the body on the floor and heaves a huge sigh. Things may not be going all according to plan here, but she's doing okay. She's infiltrated the camp with only minor damage.

If one can call an attempted rape 'minor.'

She shivers, feels her legs wobble a bit. Her knees turn to liquid.

There's blood caught under her fingernail, drying into the whorls of her fingerprints.

Her skin crawls in all the places he touched.

"Stop it," she tells herself. "It didn't happen." _Keep it together._

She picks the Odin stone up from the floor, slips it into her pocket and turns her attention to her bandage. She's amazed that they didn't search the cast, but not shocked. It fits with her assessment that they are a bunch of amateurs posing as warriors.

Gratitude for her good fortune floods through her. Her eyes flicker to the cooling body and everything in her seizes up. She looks away and starts working on the cast; her fingers tremble as she picks at the bottom bandages, her insides quiver like jelly, and her breathing is still too fast.

Her vision blurs with tears and her legs don't want to hold her weight. She closes her eyes, presses her shaking hands to her mouth and lets out a silent sob.

The attempted assault rattled her more than she'd care to admit. She feels as if she's skating the knife's edge of hysteria at a time when she needs to be clear-headed.

"Deal with it later, Soldier. Do your job now."

She counts backwards from ten, then does it again. Over and over until she feels her body calm and mind settle.

"Good."

She starts over, picking at the bottom bandage until she lifts the flap and is able to unravel the cast. She ignores the tremor in her fingers as she worms them beneath the heavy bandaging – between splint and arm; she smiles when they brush against warm metal.

_Sazh, you are a beautiful genius._

She slides the shiv from its hiding place and secures the bandage again. The metal catches the dim light, throws a small spot of light into the darkened corners of the room. A thumb scraped over the edge satisfies her as to the keenness of the blade and she feels some of the rock in her gut dissolve.

Being armed does more to calm her nerves than any pep talk ever could.

She palms the weapon, wraps her bandaged right hand around it to get a feel for the blade and make sure the bandaging will protect her hand from the razor edge of the shiv.

Time to go to work.

* * *

She makes it two steps before it dawns on her that she's locked in the building she thought was the holding cell and that she is all alone. The prisoners she expected to find on the other side of the locked door are nowhere to be seen.

Her face gets hot for a moment before her whole body goes numb. If the women aren't here, she has no idea where to find them.

She's failed without doing a damn thing.

Her knees unlock and hit the floor beside the body with a hollow thud.

Nothing. It was all for nothing.

She closes her eyes in hopes of stopping the tears. She came into this camp to save those women and all she's succeeded in doing is getting herself knocked out, nearly raped, and locked up with a dead man. She promised her sister she was off to do something worthy; swore to Hope and Sazh that she had things under control.

And Snow...

Her breath hitches at the thought of him.

_/I want to know you're safe./ _

Snow doesn't even know where she is. She didn't give him the courtesy of a call. She didn't leave him a message. She didn't leave him with anything but a bruised jaw and bad memories.

_/I thought we were friends, at least./_

Friends? Is that what they are? Snow has been many things to her since she met him but she's not certain that she ever counted him a friend. He's been pest, grub, enemy, comrade, partner, confidante, and family. He's been savior and destroyer; he's been dream and nightmare.

He is forbidden.

She reaches into her pocket and she finds the familiar knot of material. She draws it out and presses it against her face. A few traitorous tears leak from the corner of her swollen eye to dampen the material before she secrets the bandana away.

_/I'm coming with you!/_

_You did_, she thinks and the rolls her eyes at her sentimentality.

_Head injuries suck._

"Enough," she breathes. _Stop counting your losses. You have Odin, a weapon, your wits and your life. You've done more with less. Get off your knees and move._

Her effort to gain her feet again is clumsy and clamoring. If she has to escape without hostages in tow, she's going to tear her way through this camp. It'll be violent and devastating; it'll be glorious!

Her boots echo on the wooden floor as she paces the length of the room and searches her mind for a new plan. Something about the noise distracts her; it is somehow wrong...

Echoes? The hollow thud of her knees hitting a wood floor, and the white noises beneath her ear while she lay on the ground – voices or breathing, she thought.

Revelation is an audible click. Her heart does a two-step.

They _are_ here! Right beneath her damn feet.

She hits her hands and knees again to look for a trap door or latch, feels around in the dark corners where the pale light doesn't reach. Her fingers brush something and she grabs it and is stunned to find that it's a rifle. Her hands go through the motion of checking the weapon – pulling out the magazine and counting rounds before reloading the weapon with a slap; maneuvering the bolt, and adjusting the sights. The weapon is adequate. In her hands, it'll be acceptable.

Everyone's odds of surviving just went up a lot.

She looks over at the dead man in the middle of the floor, thankful that the idiot was too eager to make good on all his threats to bother disarming himself and securing his weapon. She sneers at him, then smiles at the gun as she straps it across herself and shimmies it onto her back.

_What else do you think he brought in here?_

She glances at the door to the room, then back to the body. Her eyes flicker back and forth as she fans the flicker of hope burning inside her. She crawls over to the body and begins the disturbing task of patting it down and turning out pockets. She spots his jacket on the far side of the cot and shakes it out. Her search yields another knife, a flask of some foul liquor and a set of keys.

Fortune smiles, and so does Lightning.

She jingles them once and stuffs them into her pocket with her other treasures. She returns to her search of the room, carrying the lantern to search each nook and cranny, spies a notched wood handle and lock in the floor of the corner of the room. She works key after key into the lock until one turns. She stands and heaves open the heavy wooden door.

The smell hits her in her gag reflex; she steps away and swallows the vomit before it can reach her mouth. When her stomach decides to stop doing the Cha-Cha, she tries again. Lightning breathes through her mouth, peers into the abyss and stifles the idiotic urge to call out.

This is no horror movie, and she's sure as hell isn't a damsel in distress awaiting rescue from a mysterious boogie man. She just killed the boogie man, and the only one coming to the rescue here is her.

She has work to do.

* * *

She grabs the lantern, steels herself and descends the creaking stairs deeper into hell.

The darkness in the cellar is so thick that her torch barely cuts it. She squints through the feeble circumference of light into a living nightmare. It's not a surprise – it's what she'd been expecting, after all. Still, knowing a thing and seeing it are two different animals.

The flinch is as involuntary as her gasp.

She never thought that she'd see anything worse than the horrors Barthandelus created in order to summon his beloved Maker; never believed anyone could create something more debased than that demented fal'Cie.

She was so very wrong.

The room she stands in is less a prison than a torture chamber. There are people – women, and those too young to deserve the title – chained up and strewn about like decorations. The air reeks of a combination of sweat, urine, vomit, all underlying the pungent stink of fear. There are all manner of nasty contraptions: some she recognizes in a vague way, some she's never even imagined. She takes a step towards one table, sees the blood stains on and around it and decides to leave it be.

Some horrors are better left unexplored.

She puts her back to the torture devices – they are not why she's here – and turns her attention to the weeping women. Orphan was right: humans are beyond measure and without equal, even in their depravity.

"P-Please," someone whispers. Lightning snaps out of her gaping and kneels before the speaker. "Please!" Lightning shakes her head and shushes her. "Who are you?"

"I'm here to help," she says and then moves to do just that. There's no time for perusal or reflection; there's no telling when someone will come for another bit of 'fun' and find Jace's dead body.

There's murmuring and mumbling – sounds of fear and hope. They're scared to be hopeful and Lightning doesn't blame them one bit. It wouldn't take long for hope to perish in this charnel house.

She leans closer and examines the cuffs that hold the woman before her to the wall. No locks to pick, just nuts and pins. They are simple to remove. It's puzzling that these men who keep their prisoners behind two locked doors would be so blasé with their hardware.

Lightning takes in the taut chains that hold the women's wrists against the wall at shoulder height. As Lightning unscrews the nut from the pin, the answer to riddle becomes apparent.

Breaking a body is easy, but breaking a spirit requires creativity. Like erosion, it's all a matter of time and relentless force.

The locks are all part of the torture: the promise of freedom held just out of reach. Each woman would know that freedom was but inches away, if only they could reach, if only they had a few more inches of chain.

And of course, they never would or could.

_Bastards!_

She snarls and jimmies the pin out with her shiv. The woman groans – a sound full of two parts pain and one part relief – as she lowers her arms for the first time in who-knows-how-long. Lightning goes to work on the next cuff and she hears a whispered, "I don't know who you are, but thank you. But please...please you...you have to help the others."

That brings her up short.

"Others?"

The woman nods and points to the far end of the cellar. "They separated us when we got here. They took my daughters from me."

Lightning puts a hand on a shaking shoulder and hopes that it offers a small measure of comfort or reassurance. She half expects to be shoved off – Lightning doubts she could bear having anyone touch her after suffering the sorts of assaults that this woman must have endured – but the woman leans forward and sobs onto Lightning's shoulder.

Beyond measure, indeed.

"They told us they'd kill them if we didn't obey the rules." Lightning closes her mouth and swallows down the roar of rage. "Said that our families would die if we tried to escape."

_Your families are already dead._

Lightning doesn't ask the woman's name – won't ask any of them. She needs to maintain distance in order to act. She's here to save them – or rather, help them save themselves – not to be their friend.

A bit of compassion leaks out despite herself.

She pats the woman's back and promises, "No one is dying tonight but them."

The woman backs off and holds Lightning's gaze for a moment before she transforms. No longer is she a broken victim. Now she's a mother fighting for the lives of herself and her children.

What was it that Nora had said to Snow on the Hanging Edge?

_Moms are tough._ Lightning is counting on it.

The chain isn't bolted into anything; it's threaded through loops on the wall. Now that the woman is free, Lightning can pull the chain from where it hangs like a macabre decoration and wind it up. Add some weight to one end and it'll be a great weapon. She eyes the keys in her hand and looks upward, and visions of a master lock dance in her head.

She knows just the weight to use.

"Unchain everyone else in here." She starts counting through keys – six in total – and prepares to open the next lock. "I'll get the others, and then we're all getting out of here."

* * *

The prison basement is a House of Horrors that goes on and on, and each room is worse than the last. Lightning picks her way through the space, finds a total of fourteen living prisoners – less than she hoped but more than she expected – spread over three rooms.

There are a number of dead still chained to the walls. Each one she encounters rams another steel rod into Lightning's spine and another block of ice into her veins.

She hasn't felt this murderous since the start of the Purge. She winds the rage around herself like a familiar shawl.

A couple of women trail her through the rooms, searching for their lost family members. Lightning does her best to block out the sobs – some joyful, most devastated and grief-stricken. She blocks out the sounds of despair and checks each body. The ratio of living to dead drops with each room.

"We're really getting out of here?" one woman – girl! She can't be more than fourteen or so – asks her.

"That's the plan," she replies without making eye contact. The girl becomes her shadow, trails her around the room as she touches fingers to throats and ear to chests to check for signs of life.

"Where's everyone else?"

She wishes the girl would leave her. She needs to keep herself balanced between high-simmer and low-boil, and talking is too distracting.

"Everyone else?"

"Yeah, you know? The cavalry? Or...the army. Or whatever..." the girl trails off. "The heroes."

The word 'hero' feels like a kidney shot. She can almost hear Snow saying it – yelling about being a hero as he throws her a wink – and she smiles and aches at once.

What she wouldn't give to have that dumbass hero with her right now! His bark might be annoying, but he's got a hell of a bite to back it up, and she could sure use his help surrounded as she is by enemies with a group of civilians to protect.

She thinks of him leading NORA in the Purge: protecting civilians and fighting trained soldiers and smirks. This sort of mission would be right up his alley.

But Snow's not here. He's home with Serah where he belongs. He's doing what he's supposed to do.

And so is she.

"There are no heroes," Lightning says and wishes she didn't sound wistful. Or bitter. She clears her throat and tries again: "I'm afraid I'm all you've got."

"But, what are we going to do?" The girl's voice ticks upwards with horror and Lightning turns to tell her to be quiet.

The words die in her throat as she meets the wide green eyes. Suddenly, she's in another hell staring into another pair of green eyes. The memory churns up all those old feelings like so much stinky seaweed. It takes a moment to pack them away again – all that desperation and grief that forged into a weapon to use against Eden.

Against herself.

She thinks of Hope down here, trapped and chained up in this tomb – living amongst the dead, heartbeat transformed into a countdown clock. She thinks of Serah and the horrors that might have befallen her if she'd been unfortunate enough to be en route to visit Sazh and Dajh as she'd planned.

It's Lightning's worst nightmare and this young girl just lived it – just _survived_ it.

Her resiliance is impressive.

"What's your name?"

"V-viola," the girl stammers.

"My name is Lightning, but you can call me Light."

"Light," Viola whispers. "I like that name." Lightning bends back to work as Viola steps closer to her. "Did they take you from your bed and burn your home too, Light?"

It's less the question and more the offhandedness that makes her fumble. "No."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I came to help," she answers as she unchains the last woman. "I came to get you all out of here." Only two alive in this room – and both delirious from their injuries. A military triage would call these two women 'expectant' and leave them.

Seven, five and two; fourteen of thirty-three. The percentage is dismal, but she still counts it as a win. Lightning has no intention of leaving any of the survivors behind. If they're going to die, she wants them to do so in the open air.

No one else will die in captivity; not so long as she draws breath.

"You came here alone?" Lightning hums an 'mm hmm' and Viola says, "I thought you said there were no heroes."

Lightning smiles despite herself, wonders what it is about her that attracts smart-ass kids. "Can you do me a favor, Viola?" Lightning waits for the nod. "I need you to stay with these women while I get some of the others to come and help carry them out of here. Then we're all leaving."

"But—"

"It'd be a big help," she insists.

"It's just..." Viola pauses and Lightning waits with a raised eyebrow. She resists the urge to tap her foot. "There's still The Pit."

_The Pit?_

Viola points toward another trapdoor.

* * *

Key number four.

"The Pit" is a house for the dead – a mass grave of sorts. The stench in the room is enough to tell Lightning that most of the occupants have long since passed on and gone to meet their Maker. She hopes that the next life treats these souls better than this one has. From what little she can see, it can't treat them much worse.

The bodies are stacked two and three deep at some points, piled up like sandbags in a makeshift levee. It's appalling.

Despite the stench and her own budding squeamishness, Lightning works her way through the room checking body after body for any sign of life. She left the lantern above with the survivors – a decision she regrets with her whole being as she picks through the piles of carcasses. No light means she has to handle each body – check pulses and respiration – to determine whether they live or die.

Each body she touches is in a different state of decomposition. Some are fresh enough to be in full rigor – less than twenty-four hours dead – while others are already putrefying. Touching one body gets her a handful of maggots that almost startles a girlish squeal from her.

"Keep it together," she whispers and waits for her heart to release its death grip on her throat.

Every dead body appalls her further, makes her wonder what sort of mad men occupy the camp. She'd thought she'd plumbed the depths with the Sanctum and Barthandelus, but these men are operating on a whole new level of dementia. Why keep these bodies so close? Why leave them to just...rot here?

Corpses carry disease, infect water supplies. It's one of Bartholomew's largest concerns as he designs the cities. And even if these murderers know nothing of the dangers of death, the smell is enough to deter most people from keeping them too near.

_Unless..._

She looks around the cold space and has a chilling thought. She runs her fingers over the stone wall and they come away gritty with ash. She rubs her fingers together and gives them a tentative sniff.

Gasoline.

It's a crematorium. They pile the bodies up, pour an accelerant over them and incinerate them all.

Then they start all over again.

She considers ceasing her search, leaving the rest of the bodies unchecked and getting out while she still has some semblance of her sanity, but finds that she cannot. She needs to complete this horrible task, to count and confirm the dead. It's the least they deserve.

"Light?"

She whips around toward the voice and sees a vague outline against the stairs.

"What are you doing down here?" She abandons her task and crosses the room towards Viola. She grabs the girl's arm and propels her to the stairs. "You shouldn't be down here. This is no place for a..."

_Child._

She doesn't say it but Viola hears it all the same. Lightning braces herself for a very familiar teenage hissy fit.

_Nice going, genius. _You'd think she'd have learned something from dealing with Serah and Hope.

"I'm not a kid," Viola insists, voice flirting with hysteria. "And...I have to be here."

"No, you don't. I know you're not a kid," _not anymore,_ "but this isn't any place for anyone. You understand?"

"I have to be here because my sister is down here," she chokes and breaks down into great heaving sobs.

Her sister. Lightning shivers, shudders at the horror.

The thought of her sister in a place like this is worse than anything she can imagine. It's worse than losing her to crystal stasis; worse than turning into a Cie'th.

Worse than tearing Cocoon out of the sky.

The words pour out of Viola then: "It's m-my f-fault. She was protecting _me_! And they t-took her. I heard her crying, and...and then it just..._stopped_. She's dead, I know it, and it's all my fault."

"No!" A girl protecting her sister is something to which Lightning can relate, as is searching for a lost sister. Viola's grief is something she can understand at the same time she cannot even imagine it. She has no idea what to say except: "It is _not_ your fault."

She shoves her own grief aside, pulls the weeping girl into her arms and waits out the sobs that wrack her body. She rubs her back and offers no more words. There are no words. There's no one alive down here, and they can't carry the dead out. If her sister is down here, this will be her grave.

The icy logic burns her, but she knows she can't do anything for the dead but avenge them. She needs to concentrate on helping the living now.

She turns the girl away from her and urges her up the steps with a quiet, "come on," and a hand between her shoulder blades. On the second step up there's a sound from behind them. Every hair on Lightning's body stands on end. She clamps her hand over Viola's mouth to muffle the startled squeak, hopes that she managed to stifle it enough. She turns toward the sound and watches a door on the far side of the ceiling swing open.

Her heart speeds up at the thought of being caught in this room. She keeps her hand over Viola's mouth and drags her off the steps and into a pile of bodies.

The girl bites into the flesh of her hand hard enough to break skin, but Lightning refuses to relinquish her grip. Cold air blasts into the pit and she can see an ominous sky through the opening in the ceiling. It looks like another storm is brewing, and Lightning imagines the scent of fresh snowfall on the air.

She hears laughter followed by the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh. A pained groan floats down on cold air and hits her nervous system like an electrical current.

_Not. Possible._

"You wanted to see them, well here they are! Enjoy it, hero!"

A body topples unrestrained through the opening, drops the twelve or so feet from the ceiling and lands with a wet thud on the ground.

Lightning's hand drops from Viola's mouth and she breaks cover before the heavy door swings shut.

She doesn't notice the girl tugging on her arm, hear her whispered pleas, or feel the bodies squelching under her as she climbs them.

She can't feel anything but her heart in her throat, hear anything but her own denials, or see anything but the silhouette of Snow's body lying on the floor.

* * *

TBC... (and much sooner. Chapter 10 is already in the works)

I promised a reunion was imminent, I just never promised it'd be happy. (Runs away to go hide!)  
I considered keeping the two parts as two separate chapters, but I'm really hoping to wrap this story up in twelve or thirteen chapters or so. (Considering my tendency towards LONG chapters, I'm guessing it'll be more like 15, but it's good to have goals. And an end.

Thanks for reading. Feedback is love!


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